Hockey Homicide

Easily one of my personal favorite Disney animated shorts, the animation and timing that shows a chaotic and appropriately over the top hockey game is rushes out of the gate and doesn't let up until the very end. nearly every frame of Hockey Homicide has something humorous in it, from the raucous and overly excited crowds, players who are equal parts unstoppable inertia and unchecked rage, to the referee, Clean Game Kinney, suffering various forms of abuse as he impotently tries to maintain some level of order in an increasingly chaotic game. The appeal of Hockey Homicide is in it's simplicity as the announcer (Doodles Weaver) mimics typical color commentary one would expect at a hockey game but eventually even he becomes unable to keep track who's where and what's what.

A sports announcer, filling in for the narrator, tells the story or rather game in this case about Goofy and the Goofy-lookalikes playing an aggressive game of hockey. You get some classic Goofy moments here and there, and there's some really outrageous hockey plays and fights. Even the audience members got a little carried away, ultimately becoming the watched spectacle themselves.

Lots of action in this one and crazy stuff in this one, but not much funny scenes overall.

Grade C+

A Walt Disney GOOFY Cartoon.

It's HOCKEY HOMICIDE as the Loose Leafs battle the Ant Eaters for the championship.

Here is another Goofy Sports film; the animation is routine, but the story is humorous as it skewers the popular icecapade. Doodles Weaver is the highly excitable narrator.

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.

Likes ants swarming from a nest, the crowds flock into the arena just in time to see an ice hockey match between the loose-leafs and the pelicans - well that's what it eventually says on the score sheet. The teams are led by "Fearless Ferguson" ("Goofy") and "Icebox Bertoni" ("Goofy") and a heated rivalry is guaranteed! Under the arbitration of "Clean Game Kinney" ("Goofy") - the casting budget was obviously an issue here, off we go and pretty soon it's end to end stuff with the crowds having little idea who's doing what before the much anticipated carnage ensues on and off the ice! As ever, the game is carefully judged to come to an head with a few seconds left to go, and is accompanied by a pun-ridden commentary that tries to keep the punters vaguely informed of the chaos. Indeed, as things hot enough up there's even an opportunity for a "Spitfire" to shoot, too! Does anyone really care about the result - the teams sure don't. Good fun, this - loads of action and hats off to the breathless commentator, too!

This could possibly be the greatest cartoon ever made. The usual slapstick comedy found in Goofy cartoons is here combined with the talent of Doodles Weaver as the commentator of this insane hockey nightmare. Like many of Goofy's other outings this cartoon has some great ideas, but this time there is a quiet note of genius in them. You won't have laughed so much at a cartoon since you were a child