Donald et la sentinelle

A Walt Disney DONALD DUCK Cartoon.

The BEE ON GUARD at the entry to a castellated honey depository becomes suddenly aware of a certain Duck with a mighty big sweet tooth.

This was one of a small number of films to feature the competition between Donald Duck and Buzz-Buzz the Bee and is fairly typical of the entire lot. For some reason, the Disney animators altered the Bee's persona here, making him more rotund & silly, rather like a tiny Oliver Hardy. And why does his hive have a King Bee, rather than a Queen? As always, Clarence Nash provides Donald with his unique voice.

Walt Disney (1901-1966) was always intrigued by pictures & 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 comic 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, Dumbo, Bambi & Peter Pan. Walt never forgot that his fortunes were all started by a mouse, or that childlike simplicity of message and lots of hard work always pay off.

From the title of this cartoon short, you would know immediately what the program was going to consist - a fight between Donald and the bees, with Donald possibly getting stung a few times. Here, Donald wants to steal some honey from the bees' lair in a tree trunk and, therefore, disguises himself as the insect himself and distracts the guard while he loads up the honey into two buckets.

The animation is great as usual and the bees' army is quite the nice special effect. However, the overall cartoon lacks the humor and slapstick comedy you've come to expect in Donald cartoons. While Donald did get his fair share of mishap in the cartoon, he at least ended up keeping the honey he funneled from the bees.

Grade D+

I didn't remember Donald's doubtful character, I thought he was just grumpy, not without character, and the rogue species that wants to take advantage of other people's efforts, how ugly Mr. Donald...

Master gardener Donald Duck notices the bees who pollinate his flowers have a huge hive and that means honey. He proceeds to work out a method of stealing it by misleading the bee who guards the place. One thing leads to another and Donald finds himself on the short end of the stick once more. There were so many of these bee films.

Disney and Donald Duck are always worth watching. Bee on Guard is not among their finest hours but if the short is nice enough it does its job well, and that's what Bee on Guard does. The story is nothing original and gets to a slow start and the supporting characters are just there and don't have much to do. Donald however is as charismatic and funny as ever and his personality is complimented nicely. The bee is rather dumb but amusing enough and he works well with Donald. Bee on the Guard has some amusing and well-timed gags if never not having much that is laugh-out-loud hilarious. The animation is full of lovely colours and fluid detail, which makes it very beautiful to watch, while the music is lush and characterful.

Overall, unexceptional but amusing and colourful enough to entertain and to warrant it a watch or two. 7/10 Bethany Cox