Mickey Magicien

This is a Disney cartoon that features three of its biggest stars: Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Goofy. Mickey is a stage magician, performing all sorts of tricks from cards to rabbits, while Goofy is his stagehand. Sitting in the box in the audience is Donald, heckling at Mickey for what he thinks are childish tricks until Mickey uses his magic on him.

This is a hilarious cartoon short from start to finish and it is funny to see all three characters interact, especially how Mickey tries to counterattack the heckling Donald, resulting in endless funny scenes from Donald spitting our cards to shrinking to a size smaller than an egg. Goofy is his usual goofy self, trying to work all the gadgets without getting entangled in the stage ropes. You'll probably be roaring with laughter in how it all ends.

It's a show full of magic and misadventures - comical, delightful and fun for the entire family!

Grade A

Usually, when Mickey Mouse is paired up with Donald Duck (or, more often than not, with Donald and Goofy), they separate and do their own routines, with Mickey getting the comedy short stick. Here, however, the two are constantly in contention, and the cartoon is all the better for it. Mickey is a magician whose act is constantly being interrupted by a certain web-footed heckler in the balcony. He soon makes Donald an unwilling assistant, using his skills of prestidigitation to humiliate him. He makes him spit out cards, turns him into a paper doll chain, and even makes a monkey out of him, literally. It's a pity they weren't used more as adversaries, since it brings out the best in them, pitting Mickey's resourcefulness and pluck against Donald's irascibility and mischievousness. Incidentally, Goofy is in this one also, mostly out of sight as a stage hand. Highly recommended.

In this short, Mickey is performing magic tricks on stage while Goofy does all the behind the scenes work, even though all of Mickey's tricks seem to be for real.

But Donald, as usual, isn't convinced and causes a fuss with his loud sarcasm and shouting. Mickey quickly silences him by using his magic. Donald becomes part of the act and is humiliated in various ways. It's actually quite imaginative and much better than the usual Mickey cartoons.

If only Mickey (who only has one line here) consistently kept to this high standard. He really needs Donald to make him funnier than he is and it's pretty obvious in this cartoon that the laughs come from angry Duck.

STORY- Same story structure formula used with the hilarious Boat Builders.

Beginning: Join 3 opposite characters in same adventure.

Progress: Let them build a moving sensitive action-packed construction.

Ending: Destroy the construction as a sum of all 3 heroes' faults.

SETTINGS - My favorite. Proscenium Arch.

HEROES - Mickey Mouse on the stage facing his fans and audience applausing him for his mind and hand tricks.

Goofy on the backstage working as a light technician reference to Nikola Tesla.

Donald Duck as a nasty prank-maker who confronts Mickey's tricks by his own brutal force pranks.

MOTIVE - Donald does not enjoy Mickey's magician tricks. So he jumps off to the stage mockering and making a fool out of Mickey. But Mickey has enough magician tools to cause Donald bigger troubles than he can ever imagine. Goofy in the meantime does not interfere with the duo, yet he cannot run the show focusing the light and effects on more than one host. By the final prank Donald does it to Mickey, Goofy totally fails to maintain the backstage and the entire theatre falls apart nail to nail.

In "Magician Mickey", the mouse is trying to put on a magic show and inexplicably, Donald does everything he can to be a nuisance and destroy the act. However, Mickey seems to have god-like powers and again and again, he uses them to thwart Donald....yet Donald keeps coming back for more!

Like all the Mickey and friends cartoons of the 1930s, this one is gorgeously animated and is head and shoulders better looking than the competition, such as MGM and Warner Brothers. Beautiful backgrounds, smooth animation AND no cutesy songs (a problem in many 30s cartoon shorts) make this well worth seeing....and it's among the better shorts by Disney. A delight.