Squatter's Rights

A Walt Disney MICKEY MOUSE Cartoon.

A couple of chipmunks believe they have SQUATTER'S RIGHTS in Mickey's mountain cabin.

This enjoyable, albeit unremarkable, cartoon was the second to feature the Chipmunks - although they had yet to completely metamorphose into Chip 'n' Dale. Their dialogue is almost completely unintelligible. Pluto gets most of the screen time - Mickey is left with just the bits & pieces. The last gag is strangely cruel. Nominated for an Academy Award.

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, Bambi, Peter Pan and Mr. Toad. 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.

Those rodents, Chip 'n Dale, are at their mischievous ways again, having set up their little shelter in a wood stove of Mickey's cabin. Pluto knows they are there and tries to scare them out by letting Mickey light a fire in the stove. But of course, in order to keep themselves from being incinerated, the chipmunks blow the matches out and then proceed to get Pluto into trouble with Mickey and playing games of cat and mouse with him.

It's the typical Chip 'n Dale vs. somebody cartoon short, with just a bunch of running around, slapstick jokes and the chipmunks getting away with everything. When I was a kid, I always felt sorry for Pluto when he thought he shot himself and Mickey thought the dog was laying on the ground in a pool of blood. Turns out, it was ketchup - poured on there by those chipmunks! There were some funny stuff here and there, but Chip 'n Dale are just a bunch of greedy brats who get away with murder too much!

Grade D+

Nominated for an Academy Award (I personally think there are better Disney shorts out there) Squatter's Rights is enjoyable but unremarkable. There are some good gags that come by at a fast pace and work mostly, but I for one found the final gag rather cruel. Also the pacing is rather uneven. As for my favourite Mickey, Pluto and Chip 'n' Dale cartoon, it is still Pluto's Christmas Tree. That said though, there is a lot to enjoy. Pluto gets most of the screen time, with Mickey more of a secondary character if anything else, but it is the chipmunks who steal the show. The animation and music are both nicely done, and the voice acting from Walt Disney and Pinto Colvig is excellent. Overall, nice and enjoyable. 8/10 Bethany Cox

This cartoon was nominated for an Oscar and, for the life of me, I don't understand why. It's an enjoyable short, but I don't see it s particularly noteworthy, apart from being one of the earliest Chip 'n Dale cartoons (if not the first) and I've always thought that Warner Brothers' The Goofy Gophers were better characters. Oh, well. To each their own. Well worth watching. Runs periodically on the Ink and Paint Club on the Disney Channel.