Thru the Mirror

Mickey has been reading Lewis Carrol and has dozed off. This is a combination of mouse antics and the Alice story. He does battle with numerous fictional entities and seems to have a great time. Very well animated and imaginative. Mickey is at his improvisational best.

This was made in the golden age of Disney animation (1935-1940). It involves mickey's adventures as he goes 'thru' the mirror and enters a world where inanimate objects are alive. there are many impressive bits. for example the scene where mickey eats a nut and is transformed in size is brilliantly done. there is a lot of dancing in the cartoon, mickey dances with a top hat and a pair of gloves and does a dance routine with some playing cards, and then there is a busby berkley type dance thing involving the cards. the climax involves mickey being chased by hundreds of cards and it is fantastic. you have to hand it to the artists who worked on this, it is a great cartoon. other superior mickey mouse cartoons include: the band concert(1935); mickey's garden(1935); clock cleaners(1937); moving day(1936); the sorcerer's apprentice (from fantasia (1940) ).

After falling asleep reading Alice Through the Looking Glass, Mickey dreams about walking through the mirror and entering and opposite world where almost everything is alive and has a personality. Sort of in the same way as all those annoying, singing teacups in the awful Beauty and the Beast movie.

There are many references to Alice in Wonderland of course, some subtle, some obvious and some intelligent. Though it's all great fun and wildly imaginative. It's these sort of cartoons that made Disney Studios and Mickey Mouse legendary.

In a way, it's the success of cartoon like this that are to blame for the existence of stuff like The Haunted Mansion.

But that's just the pessimist in me.

In full Technicolor, and with music by Frank Churchill, Leight Harline, and Paul J Smith (all uncredited), Thru the Mirror is one of the masterworks of the era when Walt Disney studios could have a lot of fun while keeping toes from the silent era. A lot of what happens in this story could have been one of the black and white silent/early sound-era Mickey Mouse movies, where Mickey finds himself in some bizarre situations with cartoon things that have come to life in ways that make him dance, fight and run in chase-mode. Only here the animation has become sophisticated, due to years of practice and trial and (minimal) error, with moments like Mickey eating the walnut (aka the mushroom) that makes him grow really big and then really small.

And of course there's everything with the cards, which at first are like dancers from a Busby Berkley musical (I'm sure the animators had influences from those movies, in full formation they do it up), and then the way that Disney and his writers bring in the Queen of Hearts and the King (the latter on both bottom and top levels with swords). It's also wonderful to see all the cards chasing after Mickey; I have to wonder if the animators (or just Disney himself) knew the potential to have mass figures overpowering the flagship character, and brought it over when doing something like Fantasia, as the cards have that unstoppable-holy-crap quality of the ravenous brooms.

The imagination here is boundless, and when there are gags (the chair and its baby, the umbrella, the radio that shouts out "Calling All Cards") they work well, but ever since I saw this as a kid - and through some repeat, partly from the first Mickey Mouse VHS and play from back when the Disney channel actually played these old-time cartoons I've seen it many times - I knew it had a special quality. The pacing is electrifying, the comic timing excellent, and the music combines Big-Band Jazz, musical and adventure/chase music. In a way this is one of the great Alice adaptations, distilled to just a few points like a song, and the notes played by some smart people. Did I mention in that bright, excellent early cartoon-Technicolor to boot?

When "Thru the Mirror" begins, Mickey has just fallen asleep after reading Lewis Carroll's "Through the Looking Glass". Then, like in the story, Mickey has a dream where he, too, is able to talk through the mirror into a strange parallel world. He finds that all the furnishings in the house are alive. Next, he eats a walnut and shrinks--and has all sorts of miniature adventures. He battles against some playing cards but my favorite portion is where he tap dances--in a manner highly reminiscent o Fred Astaire. All in all, there really isn't a lot in the way of plot but the cartoon is so much fun and the animation so nice that you really don't care! Clever and fun from start to finish.