Car-lassic Shorts Showcase: Susie The Little Blue Coupe

Welcome to another edition of Car-lassic Shorts Showcase and today, I will be taking a look at Susie The Little Blue Coupe.


The Plot

To sum up the plot, we follow the life of a little blue coupe through her entire life through three different owners and how they each treat her.  Honestly this prop book from Mickey's garage in the now long gone ToonTown sums this short up quite well.

For those of you that can't make out what it says. It says The Auto Biography of Susie The Little Coupe.  Now for the most part that is what this short is save for the autobiography portion.  In a way, this short falls under what I would call the fictional biography.  I say that because as I stated earlier, we follow the entire life of Susie in this short.

Narration

Narrator - Sterling Holloway

Now if you recall, my Goliath II review, Sterling Holloway was also the narrator of that short and I said that his voice felt out of place but here he actually worked.  I think part of that his is voice actually felt natural here as it took in place in what was modern times.  Also unlike the previous Sterling Holloway narration, I actually felt as though he was putting emotion in his narration and in many ways,  you could feel that he actually cared for Susie in this short.  So I have to say that I think Sterling Holloway did a better job narrating here.  

Main Character

Susie - Not voiced

Susie is quite a cheerful character and it is quite amazing how they were able to convey emotion with her without having her speak.  Then again, I have seen this with Dumbo and they made it work there as well. Though unlike Dumbo, this story expands a much longer period of time. As it starts out when Susie is a brand new car and goes into the her elderly state.  Which is quite an amazing feat as  I always love it when animated pieces of works are able to convey emotion through a character without having them talk. For instance there is one scene in the short after Susie has been bought by her second owner, who is less than credible. Susie finds out that she has been stolen and you can see the scared look on her face as she tries to run  drive away while being chased by a cop car. Even more than that you can actually feel her emotions, when she is happy, I felt happy and when she was scared I was scared for her.  Now I'd be remiss if I didn't mention this but John Lasster has stated that the design of Susie and the other vehicles in this short were the inspiration for the design of the characters in Cars.

My Final Thoughts

Susie The Little Blue Coupe is a short that should not be passed up. If you get the chance take the time to watch it as it shows what the studio was capable of back in the day and just as with Dumbo, this short shows how to properly  tell a story with non-speaking character in the lead role. This is not an easy feat to pull off but it was done quite well in this short and I think the fact that Susie doesn't talk actually makes her more likable.  

Join me next week for a very special Classic Shorts Showcase when I take a look at...

Mickey and The Beanstalk.  Now I know that I said I wasn't going to review any Mickey shorts on Classic Shorts Showcase but this where I decided to invent the Mickey Rule.  To help keep things in check, here. There are some guidelines to the Mickey Rule and they are as follows.

1. Must be adaption of an already established story

2.  Must have been released before 2000 (Therefore the Around The World In 80 Days and A Midsummer Night's Dream short won't qualify).

3. Lastly, it must have been touted as a short or part of a package film .

Just don't  expect many Mickey reviews, I'll review The Prince & The Pauper and even Mickey's Christmas Carol but that's about it for Mickey shorts. I'm on the fence about Gulliver Mickey though.