Donald's Lucky Day

A Walt Disney DONALD DUCK Cartoon.

It just isn't bike messenger DONALD'S LUCKY DAY. It's Friday the 13th and the package he is to deliver by midnight is ticking ominously...

This is a very funny little film, with poor Donald right in the thick of trouble as usual. Some older viewers will find the bicycle radio and the happy radio jingle itself to be quite nostalgic. The story was written by the legendary Carl Barks; Clarence Nash provides Donald with his unique voice.

Walt Disney (1901-1966) was always intrigued by pictures & 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 comic 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 childlike simplicity of message and lots of hard work always pay off.

Hearing the upbeat music and reading the title, you'd think that Donald's Lucky Day is what we associate usually from the Donald Duck shorts. Actually, it's not what we expect but to me that was refreshing. Donald's Lucky Day doesn't see Donald losing his temper, and for Disney and Donald it is darker and more eerie than the title and opening music lets on. Again, none of these are bad things but actually quite a refreshing change. The animation is still the vibrant and detailed animation style we are familiar with and love, yet also has a more eerie and somewhat film-noir sort of look to it. A great touch was to have the gangsters at the beginning in shadow and we never see their faces, that was creepy and added further to the suspense. The music as always is just as wonderful, right from the catchy opening credits, the jaunty enhancement in the more humorous scenes and some haunting but not too obvious scoring in the more suspenseful ones. Coming with Donald's Lucky Day is a great story with a fair bit of humour, suspense and tension. The humour is good, with the fantastic bit where Donald gets buried in fish being the highlight. Donald is on top form, always a strong lead character he really shines as he battles his own superstitions and how he struggles with them is the short's strongest asset I feel. Clarence Nash's voice work is impeccable. All in all, a Donald Duck classic, different but incredibly well done in all respects. 10/10 Bethany Cox

In 1939, both Warner Bros. and Disney released a pair of particularly gritty cartoons. Warners released "Thugs with Dirty Mugs", about a group of cat gangsters - one resembling Edward G. Robinson - going around committing crimes. Disney released "Donald's Lucky Day", in which Donald Duck has to deliver a package on Friday the 13th. Unbeknownst to him, this package contains a bomb that a pair of gangsters are sending to someone (they call the intended target a rat, implying that he's a member of their gang who told the police about them*). Complications arise when a black cat crosses Donny's path.

It's not any sort of great cartoon - I always liked the Warner Bros. cartoons better than the Disney ones - but it's interesting to see a Disney character in a gritty story for a change. It figures that it would be the temperamental Donald as opposed to the overly nice Mickey.

*Al Capone once said "Never trust a cop. You never know when he might go straight."

No Jason Voorhees is not out to kill Donald but it IS Friday the 13th and Donald is a messenger-boy who must deliver a suspicious package to number 13 on 13th street. Inside the package is a bomb set to go off at midnight by a couple of unseen thugs. Who they are and why they want to blow up someone else is never know. What this cartoon focuses on is Donald's conflict with a black cat who has crossed his path.

Yes, you can pretty much figure out that Donald is going to lose his tempter and go mad, delaying delivery of the package and risk blowing himself to smithereens. But the color pallet of this short is dark and noir-ish and is a welcome difference from the usual sunny atmospheres Donald finds himself in. A better than average Donald Duck cartoon.

This is another funny Donald Duck cartoon, where he is a delivery boy trying to deliver a mysterious package on Friday the Thirteenth, unbeknownst to him that the package contains a bomb. He hilariously runs into tabooed objects, like a ladder and a black cat.

Plenty of slapstick fun here and a mysterious, film-noire feel to the plot.

Grade A