Bongo e i tre avventurieri

This "Fun and Fancy Free" DVD (cheerfully brought to you by Disney Studios) contains two, enjoyable, 35-minute animated films from 1947.

Hosted by everyone's favourite insect - Jiminy Cricket - These 2 tales of fun-fun-fun and fancy-free adventure also feature several musical numbers as an added bonus.

Story #1 is all about Bongo, the circus bear, who desperately wants to get himself back to the forest, like, pronto.

Story #2 has Mickey Mouse (taking the place of Jack), along with Donald Duck and Goofy, climbing the beanstalk all the way up to the nasty giant's fantastic castle in the sky - "Fee-Fye-Foe-Fum!"

*Note* - Mickey Mouse was voiced by Walt Disney, himself.

Directed by Jack Kinney, Hamilton Luske, Bill Roberts & William Morgan. Starring Edgar Bergen, voices of Dinah Shore, Cliff Edwards, Walt Disney, Clarence Nash, Billy Gilbert, Pinto Colvig, Anita Gordon.

One of the Disney package films assembled between "Bambi" (1942) and "Cinderella" (1950) (when the company was low on funds due to the war effort), largely forgotten today. Features two individual stories linked together by filler material featuring Jiminy Cricket (still voiced wonderfully by Edwards, but not nearly as enchanting here as he was in "Pinnochio"), as well as Edgar Bergen in live-action cutaways that will test the patience of anyone who isn't utterly enamored with ventriloquism. The first segment is innocuous and inconsequential and a bit of a bore, featuring a circus bear named Bongo who escapes into the wild, meets a cute girl bear, and learns that nothing says, "I love you," quite as well as giving your sweetie a rough slap to the kisser (you read that right). The second is a loose retelling of "Jack and the Beanstalk" with Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Goofy; it's a treat to see the three of them together, but too much time is spent with Willie the giant, a big galoot who is neither amusing nor menacing. Not much to recommend here to anyone who isn't a "treasures from the Disney vault" buff, but the traditional, painstaking hand-drawn animation is always nice to look at, even if it's not quite up to the level of the bigger-budget productions of the early '40s.

48/100

Fun Disney picture with two stories. The first is Bongo, a cute story about a little bear falling in love and having to fight a bigger bear for his lady. Flimsy story but it moves along quickly enough. It's over a half-hour long but I didn't even really think about how long it was until after it was over so I certainly can't complain about the pacing. This story was narrated by Dinah Shore, who also sings. Lovely voice. Modern viewers, particularly those with a dark sense of humor, might see a domestic violence message in this one. Bongo was something of a 'gangsta.'

The second story is the Mickey Mouse version of Jack and the Beanstalk. I know I saw this one many times as a kid but, for the life of me, I don't remember seeing Bongo before today. So perhaps this was released on a VHS collection or something back in the day, separate from this film. This one is narrated by ventriloquist Edgar Bergen, who also appears in a live action segment doing his puppet routine in what appears to be a private birthday party for a little girl who I hoped was his daughter but turns out it was Disney child star Luana Patten. A little creepy but different times.

Jiminy Cricket also appears in the beginning and in a linking segment from the first story to the second. As always with classic Disney, the animation is excellent, with beautiful drawings and rich colors. Love the music, as well. This is far from my favorite Disney movie, even limited to the compilation ones. But I do enjoy it a lot and I can't imagine most Disney fans not liking it.

Fun&Fancy Free features the combining of two mixed live action and animated tales. The story of Bongo features Dinah Shore as it tells the bear love triangle story of Bongo the circus bear who did not mix much with his fellow bears of the wild. But he hears the call of nature and there's female bear Lily and a rough tough bear named Lumpjaw who is interested too.

All I'll say is that Bongo's education has been sadly neglected. But it all works out to the songs that Dinah Shore sings to help the story along.

The second half has Edgar Bergen and his wooden friends telling Luana Patten the story of Mickey and the Beanstalk with Mickey Mouse taking over the role of Jack. Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and Goofy do the beanstalk climb with the familiar encounter with the giant voiced Billy Gilbert.

Fun&Fancy Free is a charming Disney creation absolutely timeless.

"Bambi" (1942) was the last REAL animated feature the Disney studio released in the 1940s. Until 1950, there would only be shorts - which in general weren't as good either as the innovative ones made in the 1930s, or Jack Hannah's comic masterpieces of the 1950s - and compilation features: "The Reluctant Dragon" (1941), "Saludos Amigos" (1943), "The Three Caballeros" (1945), "Make Mine Music" (1946), "Fun and Fancy Free" (1947), "Melody Time" (1948), "The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad" (1949). You're unlikely to have seen ANY of these. All of them were stripped apart into their component pieces long ago, largely because, with the exception of "The Three Caballeros", there's no reason to keep any of them in one piece. ("Fantasia" is another exception, so much so that I've left it off the list altogether - it's a completely different kind of endeavour.)

I say this even though "The Three Caballeros" is the only one I'VE seen. I have seen most of the material that went into these movies, though, and trust me: it's uneven, and there's no coherent way of gluing most of it together. -"Fun and Fancy Free", in any event, consists of just two extended shorts: "Bongo" and "Mickey and the Beanstalk". I'm writing mainly to defend the latter. People are much too hard on it. There's a marked similarity between it and the winning short cartoon "The Brave Little Tailor" (1938), another fairytale with Disney characters taking the lead roles, and while "Beanstalk" lacks the earlier short's freshness, it has the advantage of having Donald and Goofy in it, two terribly under-rated cartoon stars who, although capable of sustaining shorts on their own, play off well against one another. (That's why it's impossible to make a Mickey/Donald/Goofy cartoon that's a TOTAL failure.) "Mickey and the Beanstalk" is one of the few post-war cartoons to recapture the spirit of Disney's depression-era stuff.

"Bongo" is of almost no interest - a vapid, directionless account of a circus bear who must adapt to life in the wild, complete with songs. People interested in the history of animation should see every Disney production they can get their eyes on; there's no other reason to see this one. The sheer POINTLESSNESS of pairing "Bongo" with "Mickey and the Beanstalk" makes this Disney's most bizarre compilation feature of the decade. -I wish I'd seen the linking segments. They can't possibly JUSTIFY the film's arbitrary nature, but it might be entertaining to see them try.