Disney Film Project Podcast - Episode 21 - Prom

This week the DFPP team takes a look at Disney's new release for April, Prom. The newest attempt by Disney to make a new tween franchise came out a month ago, so let's see how it went. Who did you go with? (Judging by the box office, no one.)

Listen, download, etc.

Show notes:

• Disney's Prom page
• IMDB
• Wikipedia
• Director Joe Nussbaum's filmography
• Aimee Teegarden's IMDB page
• The Breakfast Club
• Prom sequel? Probably not now.
• Katie Wech (writer) IMDB page
• Wech's interview on Prom
• Rich Ross, Chairman, The Walt Disney Studios
• Corey & Lucas in For the Win!
• What Disney wanted to happen
• Tim Gunn of Project Runway and Parsons

Wet Paint

Another day, another Disney short, this time featuring our good friend Donald Duck taking the time to repaint his car in Wet Paint. If you’ve ever deal with wet paint, you will enjoy watching Donald struggle in this short as he deals with a bird that is constantly interrupting him and causing chaos.

If you think too hard about Wet Paint, you will ruin the fun. How is Donald painting a car with a paintbrush? Why does he have more than 2 colors when those are the only ones he uses? How did the bird get out of the paint in the first place? There’s not a lot of logic to the short, but it manages to entertain because of the classic formula of Donald’s frustration.

The variations on the theme of the bird messing up the fresh paint on Donald’s car and Donald trying to fix it could easily get repetitive. In Wet Paint, though, there’s a unique twist on each one that makes it fun. We get Donald covering one mistake then we get another scene where he splashes tons of different colors all over the car and then another where there is hair all over it. Each variation ups the ante just a bit and makes it quite fun.

Little details in each individual segment make Wet Paint a lot of fun. When Donald is first painting over the tracks of the bird, he paints up the hood of the car, paints over the entire windshield, over the trunk and then through the car by painting upside down on the underside. It’s funny, even if it’s not laugh out loud funny. Little details like that can make all the difference.

I like especially how Donald’s relationship with the bird escalates. He starts off annoyed and then gets progressively angrier. First he chases the bird away, then shoots at her and finally takes an axe to her tree before having a crisis of conscience. I’ve said before, Donald works best when this is his dynamic, so it’s wonderful to see it being executed here.

The ending seems a little cliché, as the bird’s babies flock to Donald’s head and stay his hand from chopping them down with the axe. Perhaps a better ending would have been to have Donald get some kind of comeuppance, but that could also be me splitting hairs. Wet Paint succeeds in being funny and engaging because it has some wonderful visuals and gags, and that’s probably enough.

Purloined Pup

In my years (has it been that long?) of watching the Disney shorts, I’ve learned that Pluto needs a foil. When he has a chance to play off of someone, Pluto is a fun character who can be truly entertaining to watch. In Purloined Pup, Pluto gets to work against Butch, the bulldog character he has matched wits with before. That simple formula creates a fantastic short for Pluto.

Pluto enters the film as a police dog, on the trail of a missing dog heir. It’s immediately laid out in the old spinning newspaper gag that Butch is the one who kidnapped the dog. Our first shot of Pluto in the short comes with a police badge around his neck and it makes all the difference in the world.

Giving Pluto a purpose and a direction makes him so much more focused. Typically we see Pluto darting around from gag to gag with no real reason why. Giving the police dog angle to him was an inspired touch. It doesn’t hurt that the gags are so magnificent in this short, either. The combination of story and well done gags are so potent here that you wonder why there were not more stories of Pluto in this vein.

My favorite gag in the short is when Pluto is sneaking into the abandoned location where Butch is keeping the stolen puppy. He nearly gets caught by Butch but instead manages to dangle himself just above the bulldog, hanging by his teeth on a string. Watching him dangle there ups the stakes of the short while providing fantastic comedy.

When he ultimately is able to break the puppy out and the inevitable chase ensues, it picks up the pace and makes things feel more exciting. It’s really just another set up for running from gag to gag. There’s another great one that features both Butch and Pluto in a connected pipe running around.

Purloined Pup ends up being one of the better Pluto shorts because it allows Pluto to be both heroic and goofy at the same time. He’s doing something brave by taking on Butch, but still manages to be the silly, loveable Pluto we’ve come to know and love. It makes for a fun, fast moving and satisfying entry in the series.

All images copyright Disney. All rights reserved.

Donald's Double Trouble

A suave and debonair Donald Duck is an interesting change to the traditional Donald formula. As presented in Donald’s Double Trouble, we get to see what life would be like for Donald Duck if he were well spoken, well-mannered and a perfect gentleman. The ingenious step, of course, is to have our normal Donald there alongside the new and improved version, to make the contrast even better.

Donald Duck is taking a lot of heat from Daisy as this short begins, mainly for being the same Donald Duck we have all grown to know and love. To be fair, if you were dating the angry and unintelligible duck, you might want him to change as well. The problem is how will Donald change the things that make him so unique?

A solution presents itself rather quickly, as the double rounds the corner right after Donald’s blistering conversation with Daisy. The idea instantly comes to our fowl protagonist to have the “better” version stand in for him. But it’s not until Donald shows his double a picture of Daisy that he agrees to do it.

The contrast between the two could not be clearer at that point. Where Donald is in the moment and focused on the problems at hand, the double is looking ahead, plotting his attempt to woo Daisy over to his side. As we go forward, we see the double calm, cool and collected, while Donald loses his temper every few moments.

My favorite gag in the short is the bell ringing that Donald hears in his head every time that Daisy and the double kiss or show affection. It seems like an annoyance, which it can be for a second, but it’s a gag that pays off in the end. When the double and Daisy go into the Tunnel of Love during the finale, the bell goes off in Donald’s head, even though he can’t see them. That’s the signal that it’s time for Donald to intervene, which he does in hilarious fashion.

The contrast is the fun of this short, and it works fabulously. Seeing a Donald Duck that is out of the normal expectations is great fun. Making that Donald even more scheming than the original makes it more fun. Donald’s Double Trouble is a great short that takes a new twist on Donald, making it a novelty in 1946.

Disney Film Project Podcast - Episode 20 - High School Musical 2

This week, the DFPP team continues our look at the High School Musical films with the second film, High School Musical 2. Brie drops out this week for summer, but we're joined again by Megan Annunziata as we ask "What Time Is It?" Summer Time!

Listen, download, etc.

Show notes:

• Wikipedia
• IMDB
• Disney's HSM2 page
• HSM2 trivia from TV.com
• Miley Cyrus cameo on YouTube
• List of Characters
• Humuhumunukunukuāpuaa
• How to Make Flying Paper Lanterns
• Megan on Twitter

Squatter's Rights

Can you believe it? After years of neglect, Mickey returns to the Disney shorts with Squatter’s Rights. Perhaps it is a stretch to say that he returns, however, because Mickey is merely the catalyst for this short, which really focuses on Pluto’s quest to rid their stove of Chip and Dale. As is usually the case in these later years, Mickey is merely window dressing.

Chip and Dale made a previous appearance to menace Pluto and now have returned to cause more mischief. The characters are back and will continue to become more a part of the Disney landscape in years to come, mostly as foils for Donald Duck. Pluto, though, always works best with a smaller or less menacing foe, and this plays to his strengths.

Chip and Dale have been camping out in Mickey’s log cabin, specifically in the stove. When Mickey and Pluto return to the cabin for what appears to be a hunting trip, the chipmunks are in a bit of trouble, since Mickey will want to cook things. Pluto sniffs out the interlopers when he goes to load the stove, and the first 2/3 of the short are about them defending their adopted home.

It’s sort of a “Home Alone” style plot, as the chipmunks come up with several different schemes to keep Pluto out. I enjoyed the slapstick humor of this part of the short, but it does tend to drag on a bit. Chip and Dale are entertaining enough, but you don’t get much personality out of them, or any kind of special gag.

Once they leave the stove, though, and Pluto begins chasing them through the cabin, things pick up a little bit. The chases and chaos you would expect from Pluto taking on Chip and Dale occur in this part of the short. It’s that fast moving action and chaos that makes Pluto his best. Adding Chip and Dale to the mix makes it that much more compelling.

The gag that tops them all, though, is Pluto getting his nose stuck in a rifle over the mantle. If he pulls to hard to get out then the gun will go off and shoot him. The delicate dance of Pluto getting out and Chip and Dale egging him on ends with a funny little bit that solves the problem of where the chipmunks will live. It’s an inventive solution that is a credit to the story team, and makes this a short worth watching, despite its low Mickey content.

All images copyright Disney. All rights reserved.

In Dutch

Seems like its all Pluto, all the time lately, but the next 1946 short features the main Disney dog again, this time in a different setting. In Dutch takes Pluto and moves him to a foreign setting, mixing things up a bit, and is much more cohesive and interesting than some of the more recent Pluto shorts.

That’s not to say that In Dutch is altogether great, but it does a good job of having one consistent story and serving the main character well. We get Pluto as a milk delivery dog here, making his deliveries in a small Dutch town. It’s an interesting choice, because we see Pluto as an independent dog, without an owner or a dog house to hold him back.

We get a complication, though, as a female dog shows up with a mind to get her paws on some of Pluto’s milk. Strangely, that is a literal statement, as the female gets Pluto to pour some milk in a bowl and eventually even in some flowers so she can get a drink. The interplay between Pluto and the female is fun and flirty. It’s very lighthearted and sets a nice tone for the short.

In their flirtation, however, the two get tangled up in the town’s warning alarm bell for the local dam, which every good Dutch town must have. Apparently there are a lot of Dutch towns built near flood plains, if cartoons are any example. When the villagers see that this is not a broken dam emergency, however, they get a little irritated.

You can see where this is going, and although it’s predictable, it’s still fun. The next time that the bell is rung, it’s Pluto ringing it on purpose because the dam is actually breaking. The nice twist that the animators put on the old “boy who cried wolf” tale here is that Pluto has to find a way to get the townsfolk’s attention. So, he decides to go through and destroy things to get them to chase him.

This little sequence of Pluto destroying things and causing havoc in the town is the most fun I have had watching a Pluto short in a long time. We get to see him being intentionally mischievous while still serving a higher purpose of saving the town. The damage he does is minimal, but it’s still fun to watch.  The main complaint I have is that by the time Pluto arrives at the dam, his lady friend has already fixed things. If that was the plan, then why go get the townspeople? The logic doesn’t quite make sense, but that’s a minor quibble in an otherwise enjoyable short. My hope is that Disney keeps up this kind of sort with the remaining 1946 Pluto shorts.