La remorque de Mickey

I had a video with a few old Disney cartoons back when I was ten or so, and haven't watched it in about 10 years. I happened to be watching my nephew today, when I decided to pop it in again. And to my surprise, I was still entertained.

The best on this tape was a toon from '38 called "Mickey's Trailer." An incredible short, with loads of amazing sight gags...the house revealing itself to be just a trailer by the dump, Goofy getting the short end of the stick via some disagreeable drawers, and probably best of all, a near-miss with a train--TWICE!

It is so hard to believe this was made over 60 years ago. Somehow the animators back then had a knack for making their works timeless. Hopefully, kids will be watching this short for another 60 years.

Goofy, Mickey Mouse, and Donald Duck live in a mobile home. Goofy is the absent-minded driver.

This is a classic Disney cartoon. The colors are bright. The characters are iconic. The animation is pure. It is simple fun at its best.

I was obsessed with this cartoon when I was a child, and now that I have the new DVD box set "Mickey Mouse in Living Color," I can watch it every day! This is just filled to the brim with some of the funniest jokes Disney ever created. The animation is simply gorgeous, as it always was in this era of Disney Studios. 10/10.

Disney in the late 1930s did animated shorts like no one else did them. Warner Brothers was after the visual gag and creating continuing characters, while MGM was interested in making visually pretty cartoons and mostly one-shots, with few recurring characters. For Walt Disney, shorts served a couple of primary purposes: one, they kept the Disney name and his principal characters before the public and two, most importantly to Disney, they were a good testing and training ground for new animation techniques, so he could make the feature films as close to perfect as possible. In this short (a fantastic cartoon in its own right), the visual gags are great, but the timing on everything has to be perfect or it won't work. You can see the seeds of things Disney did later in features like Dumbo and Bambi in shorts like Mickey's Trailer, which serve as dry-runs while being great works in and of themselves. Some of the best bits ever done were done for these shorts just to see what worked and what didn't. Magnificently animated. Well worth watching. Most highly recommended.

'Mickey's Trailer (1938)' is a short film in which Mickey, Donald and Goofy get into a spot of bother when their trailer begins to careen uncontrolled down a mountain trail. It's an enjoyable experience filled with inventive sight gags, most of which come from the unconventional mobile home that the trio live in (it features transforming rooms and, even, its very own yard). There are several chuckles throughout and the animation is pleasing to watch. Plus, the characters are as charming as ever. The first two thirds of the piece does lack a proper sense of narrative propulsion; it's more like a series of small set-pieces. However, this isn't really an issue. The final act introduces some proper conflict and wraps itself up with an expected but satisfying gag. It perhaps finishes a little too quickly, but - again - that isn't a big deal. Overall, this is an entertaining time throughout. 7/10.