D52 Week 9: Fun and Fancy Free!

Just imagine being part of Walt Disney's film animation division in 1941! Everyone was riding high on the successes of two films and the failure of two others, and it seemed like the sky was the limit! Why, there you had a studio that could continue expanding indefinitely, starting countless new projects before even finishing the previous one, forever and ever, right?

Well, everyone who thought that was kind of a moron. Hitler happened and then the 1940s became the package film decade. Unlike Make Mine Music, with its mostly new (but low-budget, of course) shorts and general making mine music, Fun and Fancy Free was an attempt to blatantly burn off a couple half-completed feature film projects from before the war. The name, of course, comes from the fact that, well, they couldn't be bothered to find any sort of thematic link between the two segments. I've already got one - the climbing of plants is fairly important to both. Walt Disney's Plantastic Adventures?

"Bongo"

Huzzah, more subpar discarded material from an earlier Disney film! In this case, Pinocchio. Jiminy's song isn't bad, honestly, but it presents a weird situation where Mr. Cricket essentially pops up in order to...play a record of someone else narrating our story. Actually, a record of someone else sparsely narrating our story. Anyone who bought that record would've rightly felt pissed, I'd assume.

This story has some pretty nice things going for it, to be sure, but it suffers from its weird length and its incomplete nature. For example, I got a good chuckle out of Bongo's failures at fishing! That's why I was disappointed to see that bit abandoned so quickly. Most of the early material gets thrown out like this without having time to breathe, actually. The animals of the forest (including a comical chipmunk duo who aren't Chip and Dale, or comical) don't really seem to form a cohesive forest community, unlike Bambi, of which those scenes are clearly a low-budget rehash! Bongo's discovery that forests are noisy and terrifying at night completely misses the opportunity to be an effective nightmarish set piece! Clearly, most of the effort was put into the second half, with its uninteresting bear romance. This is uncomfortable both generally because of the pervading "domestic abuse is totally okay!" vibe, and specifically because Lumpjaw is openly a paedophile. Was paedophilia more acceptable in the 40s?

But anyhoozle, yes, it would've been interesting to see how this would've played out as a feature had World War Jr. not caused Disney so much financial distress. For example, would a full-length Bongo have had actual voice acting? I would've hoped so, because Dinah Shore is a woefully inadequate narrator. She's also inadequate at reading imagined bear dialogue. (Apparently a standalone re-released version of "Bongo" featured Jiminy Cricket narrating the entire story, which I'd figure might've worked better, and would've made for an interesting DVD extra.) I also have to wonder if Bongo's original status as a sequel of sorts to Dumbo would've helped or hindered it in the end; the only link that's really left is the animation style, about on par with said film, cheap but extremely competent right when it needs to be.

Plant-Based Element: Bongo is unable to climb trees because he has lived a sheltered and abused life! Ha ha! Eventually, though, his furry little forest friends team up to help him climb, so he can go have treetop sexual congress with Lulubelle. Awwwww.

"Mickey and the Beanstalk"

And now Jiminy Cricket pops up in order to watch someone else introduce this story, in live action. Way to earn that paycheck, Cliff Edwards! Now, I'm not at all familiar with Edgar Bergen's act, to be honest, and this was a pretty damn creepy first impression. I mean, he's having a "party" with a little girl, who is trapped there, alone, with him and his apparently possessed ventriloquist dummies. And he's trying to ply her with candy and cake and cigars and, seriously, am I the only modern viewer who finds this weirdly offputting? Lumpjaw probably liked it, though.

It made sense for "Bongo" to have a narrator, at least, since there wasn't any other voice acting. Here, it's just annoying. Mickey, Donald, and Goofy are established characters and certainly interesting enough to carry the story without Candice Bergen Sr. adding in half-hearted jokes via the most pathetic of all artforms, audio-only ventriloquism. And we definitely didn't need so many complete breaks in the action to cut back to live-action ventriloquism! (Again, a re-release featured a different narrator - the consistently interesting Sterling Holloway.) Like "Bongo", one imagines that the original pre-WWII drafts of this didn't involve narration, and it probably flowed better without it. It's interesting how things like these celebrity narrators were pretty much necessary to sell these package films during the 40s, but have since become the thing contributing most to them being a hard sell for modern audiences.

Bergen explains that Willie the Giant stole the singing harp because he's "selfish", but it seems obvious to everyone that a more like explanation is that, well....he's clearly just a simple-minded fool. Mickey, Donald, Goofy - dudes, you broke into the poor guy's house. He has a right to be upset. You could've at least explained why you need the harp back so badly. Willie's a loveable idiot, give him the benefit of the doubt. It's a little disconcerting how quickly our heroes resort to murder. Yeah, that's a problem that's pretty much inherent to every adaptation of Jack and the Beanstalk, but still...here, the story is told with characters who are supposed to be likeable! Despite their weird callousness, though, they're by far the best thing about this. Most of the story is sloppily written - it features a location blatantly named Happy Valley, after all - but Donald Duck is consistently amusing, Goofy is consistently amusing, and Mickey Mouse is, um....famous?

Plant-Based Element: Spoiler alert! There's a beanstalk! A beanstalk that Mickey Mouse uses to senselessly murder some dude!

Overall

Saludos Amigos, The Three Caballeros, and Make Mine Music aren't Disney classics by any means, but one positive thing they had going for them was variety. If you didn't like one short, there were five more waiting for you right around the corner. You're bound to like at least one of those, right? Clearly, Fun and Fancy Free is lacking in this regard. If you don't like one segment, you'd better hope and pray that you like the other, or else you just wasted 73 minutes of your life for no good reason! Fortunately, both "Bongo" and "Mickey and the Beanstalk" feature a healthy helping of charm; unfortunately, the segments play out with the minimal depth of eight-minute short subjects even though they last about four times as long. Combine that with the weirdly high paedophilic creep factor (seriously, is this just me???) and it's suddenly a bit hard to recommend. It's charming, but not charming enough...

UNNECESSARY DIRECT-TO-DVD DISNEY SEQUEL CONCEPT THINGAMADOODLE: Considerably More Fun, with a Negative Quantity of Fancy returns to the world of these Two Fabulous Characters in two all-new not-quite-shorts-but-definitely-not-features-either! In "Beach Blanket Bongo", Bongo and Lulubelle get married, with Lumpjaw as his best man for some reason. They go on a fabulous Hawaiian honeymoon, but Lulubelle gets lost at sea, and it's up to Bongo's totally radical surfing skillz to save the day! Kyle Massey narrates. Then, in "Mickey and Another Beanstalk", it's another exact retelling of Jack and the Beanstalk starring Mickey Mouse, because apparently that was Walt Disney's most favourite thing in the world to do over and over. Candice Bergen Jr. narrates.