O Aniversário de Pluto

A Walt Disney MICKEY MOUSE Cartoon.

With all the young mice in the neighborhood invited to PLUTO'S PARTY, no wonder the affair turns into a complete shambles.

A mildly humorous, although completely unremarkable, cartoon. No attempt whatsoever is made to delineate any of the small rodents. Listen carefully and you'll hear Mickey clearly name Donald's nephews, Huey, Dewey & Louie, as among the expected party guests, but apparently the little ducks had second thoughts about attending.

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.

Mickey is giving Pluto a birthday party. He rolls out a cake under a backyard gazebo. The cake has little fire hydrants on it! It looks good to the dog, who is salivating looking at the cake. Unfortunately, he has to take a bath first, and then has to wait for the guests to arrive.

When those have taken place, poor Pluto gets a lot more frustration as the kids toss him around and torment him, not in a nasty way but it comes out that way to the poor dog. Man, if this is a normal Pluto cartoon - and I've seen a few them - I don't want to see too many more because you feel the dog's frustration in each story. Pluto is always been teased and tormented by somebody. It's a wonder the dog didn't turn into a mental case.

Yes, all's well that end's well, but for 98 percent of these Pluto cartoons, things don't go so well.

Pluto's Party is not what I consider among the best of Pluto and Mickey. But I did find very lively and cute, the cartoon is very fast paced and all the characters are fun with Pluto, as he is teased and tormented, stealing the show. Pluto's Party also has beautiful animation and vivacious music. However there are some aspects that make the cartoon unexceptional. Not just the predictable story but also that a vast majority of the humour is rarely laugh-out-loud hilarious but more mildly amusing. Also the cartoon is a little too short, if they expanded it a little more I think they could have made the ending less abrupt and mawkish. In conclusion though, Pluto's Party is very watchable. 7/10 Bethany Cox