Scouting Week: Survival of The Woodchucks

Hello & welcome back to Scouting Week.  Today, we move to the year 2000 as I take a look at the Mickey Mouse short,  Survival of The Woodchucks.  With that out of the way, let's begin.




The Plot


The plot is simple enough in that Donald has taken the boys to a park to earn their Wilderness Survival badge by passing their Survival test.  The boys try their hardest to get through their test but as I mentioned Monday in my Junior Woodchuck article, Uncle Donald doesn't want to see them succeed as he at every turn, tries to sabotage them. Whether  it be cutting rope on the rope bridge, or dressing up as a bear.  The boys find out that he is doing this because Donald never earned his Wilderness Survival badge.  Now I do wish that I had gone into more detail with this and perhaps, this short could've aided in showing a young Donald as a Junior Woodchuck failing his Survival test. Ah, well at the end of the short, the boys do get their badge and they also give one to Uncle Donald. Which was a sweet way to end.





Characters



Huey, Dewey, & Louie voiced by Tony Anselmo

Okay, the boys were a lot of fun and felt more developed in this short and seeing them fail at first was neat because it seemed like they were going to fail but as stated in the plot, it was their Uncle Donald sabotaging them but it was nice seeing them getting their revenge on them. And in the end, they get their badge. It was a simple story to be sure but it worked.


Donald also voiced by Tony Anselmo

Now Donald was okay at best,  underdeveloped in this short but I don't think that it was fair to want to see his nephews fail because he didn't the badge, they were going for.  And this isn't brought up until after the boys' first few attempts at making the boys fail and again, I feel that maybe this short could've aided from a flashback showing Donald failing his Survival test.  That is perhaps my biggest complaint with this short.  I mean I get the Donald/nephews feud thing as that been in so many shorts featuring these characters but here, it feels that even though they mentioned why Donald was doing it, it A. made no sense to have Donald take it out on his nephews and B. the explanation was half-baked.




My Final Thoughts



All in all, this was an okay short. Some things could've been tweaked to make it better. I don't dislike the short but it just felt like it was there and I feel if they had shown Donald actually failing his survival test, that would make Donald's attempts to have his nephews fail, a bit more just.  Well,  we're closing in on the end of Scouting Week. Join me tomorrow as I close out with a special Music Fridays.