The Hockey Champ

A Walt Disney DONALD DUCK Cartoon.

Donald, THE HOCKEY CHAMP of Duck Swamp, gets himself into trouble when he brags of his prowess on the ice to his Nephews.

This enjoyable little film boasts fine animation & a funny storyline. Early on, Donald does an impression of Norwegian skating queen Sonja Henie, a big movie star at the time, even replicating her trademark tiptoe ice dancing. Clarence "Ducky" Nash supplies the unique voices of Donald & the Nephews.

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.

This Donald Duck short is wonderfully animated and very entertaining. The story is simple, Donald challenges his nephews to a game of ice hockey leading to all sorts of winter hi-jinks. The winter setting inspires many creative sight gags, and the Disney gang uses them to the extreme. Donald's opening figure skating scene is a great piece of animation.

Donald Duck teaches his nephews ow to play hockey. Then they teach him that it's not about just skating and hitting the puck accurately in this typically fine cartoon from Disney.

One of the pleasures of watching cartoons these days, instead watching them when I was a kid, dinosaurs roamed the earth and TV screens were tiny -- a couple of years ago, I was in an electronics store, where a sales proudly pointed to a 9-foot screen and asked if I had ever seen a television that size. I replied that we had one when I was four; it was ten feet wide, with the usual 8-inch screen -- is watching beautiful, clean prints -- even in movie theaters, the prints were always at least a bit scratched and dirty -- on sizable screens that offer clarity comparable to movie theaters.

This cartoon is not only fun. It's beautiful.

I noticed one review that complained that 'the characters didn't really get along and were mean-spirited toward each other'. Well, this is very true in "The Hockey Champ"...but also in MOST cartoons featuring Donald and his nephews! I can only assume they haven't seen that many of these Disney shorts.

When the short begins, Donald is skating around the lake--pretending he's the Olympic skating champion, Sonja Henie. Soon, the nephews arrive and Donald tries to show them how a champion hockey player plays the game. Mostly, however, what you see are the nephews tormenting Donald.

To me, this is an average Donald and nephews film...no better, no worse.

I'm always partial to the Disney cartoons set in winter with the quaint Victorian looks to the countryside and enchanting atmosphere (such as 1935s 'On Ice'). It looks brilliant here in this cartoon and I'm pleased to say it's one of the more inventive and clever Donald Duck shorts.

This time round the irritable duck is skating around on a frozen lake when his nephews appear for a game of hockey. He shows off to them his hockey trophy (kept in his jacket) and brags about how he's the best hockey player in the world. As you can guess already, he gets too big for his boots (err...webbed feet) and Huey, Duey and Louie play no end of tricks on him.

If only he would keep his big mouth shut once in a while huh?