L'ange gardien de Donald

A Walt Disney DONALD DUCK Cartoon.

DONALD'S BETTER SELF has quite a chore: to keep the young Duck from listening to Temptation and playing hooky.

This is a very good cartoon, featuring excellent animation & acting. But why is Donald back in school? It must be a flashback to his youth. Highlight - our hero's first encounter with a corncob pipe. Clarence "Ducky" Nash supplies Donald's voice.

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.

Coz in this he's still a kid going to school. Or at least he should be going to school. He doesn't feel like getting out of bed and his devil side wants to lie in but his angel side convinces him to get up. Then there's the dilemma of either going to school or having fun. Should he go fishing or go to class? Should he smoke a big cigar or do the intelligent thing and refuse it?

Obviously the devil and angel start fighting it out with each other instead of bothering with Donald himself. And in the end he does end up going to class. But really, how old is Donald and is he really still in School? Whatever the answer is, it's a funny cartoon.

This short marked the appearence of Donald' s devil side and angel side, in which they both tried to tell Donald to go to school or not to go to school. The plot was great, but there is a floating timeline here, which Donald turned into a student instead of an adult, so how old is him for sure?

This plot is great for Donald, because the two opposite side of Donald's personality can teach Donald what is right, gags are not omitted from the short, so that's probably why during the days of WWII, the National Board of Canada decided to make a Donald short "[Donald's Decision] (1942)", which the plot is totally based on this short.

Overall, it's rather great except for the floating timeline. I ranted 8/10.

This is a fun little cartoon short from Disney, featuring Donald Duck as a schoolboy. Here, Donald meets his conscience, who resembles him and wears a white robe and a golden halo. She attempts to get Donald to get out of bed and go to school, but gets a run-in from Donald's anti-conscience, dunning a red cape and red horns, who tries to have Donald stay in bed. What results is a back and forth battle for Donald between the good and bad consciences. It's OK for a few laughs and it's somewhat entertaining to see some good vs. evil action going on. The good conscience wants Donald to go to school while the bad conscience wants him to go fishing instead, among of things.

Despite Donald being in this cartoon, there isn't a whole lot of laughable moments or comedy you'd come to expect from Donald, but it's still not a bad cartoon short - a good lesson about right and wrong.

Grade B-