Giantland

This cartoon is kind of a precursor to two other giant cartoons featuring Mickey Mouse - The Brave Little Taylor and Mickey and the Beanstalk, which I thought were both more entertaining this this one. However, this short does have some excitement value, particularly the part where Mickey tries to escape from the inside of the giant's mouth. Animation was quite good as well.

Grade B-

A Walt Disney MICKEY MOUSE Cartoon.

Mickey regales his young audience with a description of how he climbed a beanstalk into the clouds and confronted the monstrous King of GIANTLAND.

This splendid little black & white film boasts of a lively story and very fine animation. Mickey's squeaky voice is supplied by Walt Disney, who would explore the theme of Mickey versus giants again in the classic BRAVE LITTLE TAILOR (1938) & the 'Mickey and the Beanstalk' sequence in FUN AND FANCY FREE (1947).

Walt Disney (1901-1966) was always intrigued by drawings. As a lad in Marceline, Missouri, he sketched farm animals on scraps of paper; later, as an ambulance driver in France during the First World War, he drew figures on the sides of his vehicle. Back in Kansas City, along with artist Ub Iwerks, Walt developed a primitive animation studio that provided animated commercials and tiny cartoons for the local movie theaters. Always the innovator, his ALICE IN CARTOONLAND series broke ground in placing a live figure in a cartoon universe. Business reversals sent Disney & Iwerks to Hollywood in 1923, where Walt's older brother Roy became his lifelong business manager & counselor. When a mildly successful series with Oswald The Lucky Rabbit was snatched away by the distributor, the character of Mickey Mouse sprung into Walt's imagination, ensuring Disney's immortality. The happy arrival of sound technology made Mickey's screen debut, STEAMBOAT WILLIE (1928), a tremendous audience success with its use of synchronized music. The SILLY SYMPHONIES soon appeared, and Walt's growing crew of marvelously talented animators were quickly conquering new territory with full color, illusions of depth and radical advancements in personality development, an arena in which Walt's genius was unbeatable. Mickey's feisty, naughty behavior had captured millions of fans, but he was soon to be joined by other animated companions: temperamental Donald Duck, intellectually-challenged Goofy and energetic Pluto. All this was in preparation for Walt's grandest dream - feature length animated films. Against a blizzard of doomsayers, Walt persevered and over the next decades delighted children of all ages with the adventures of Snow White, Pinocchio, Dumbo, Bambi & Peter Pan. Walt never forgot that his fortunes were all started by a mouse, or that simplicity of message and lots of hard work always pay off.

Giantland is a truly excellent short. The giant's character design does occasionally lack consistency but that is the one quibble I have with Giantland. The animation aside from what I mentioned above is just great, I loved the crispness of the backgrounds and shadings and I thought Mickey was very well drawn. There are some standout sequences also, Mickey riding on the giant butterfly and the scene in the giant's mouth are delightful but the most spectacular bit of animation was with the giant's fall, what was done to make this sequence even more interesting was really clever. The music has the characterful energy you'd expect from a Disney short, while the gags are fun. The funniest part was Mickey inside the giant's mouth, the ways in which Mickey tries to avoid getting swallowed are very inventive and as I've said before it is also a great piece of animation. The story is largely familiar to us, but told to us in a fresh way in the form of a story-book structure, which I felt was appropriate for the telling of this story. Mickey is very likable, the giant suitably antagonistic and the Orphans were very cute and not as rascally or annoying as they could be. One might wish that there was also Goofy, Donald and Pluto on hand, but I think Mickey did wonderfully without them, despite them being perhaps stronger characters in the humour department. In conclusion, a great short. 9/10 Bethany Cox