Get A Horse!

Hello   &  welcome  back  to A Look at Disney.   Monday,  as a part of the Mickey  Mouse Mondays (2013),  I reviewed Potatoland,  a short that was supposed to celebrate  Mickey's  85th  birthday  and in that regard,  I was disappointed as it did nothing to celebrate or honor the career of Mickey Mouse.  In that same review,  I mentioned that  I would review  Get A Horse!   Now, I'd been pumped for this short since I first learned of it and at the time,  I thought it was a lost Mickey Mouse short but if I remember correctly,  Disney was promoting it that way as to hide what the short was really like.  This short was conceived and directed by Lauren  MacMullan, who had previously worked on The Simpsons and Avatar: The Last Airbender.    She came up with this idea from her fondness of the earliest Mickey Mouse from 1928 - 1929 and in that regard it shows,  and something that impressed me is that used archival  voice recordings  of Walt Disney, Billy Bletcher,  and Marcellite  Garner  for  Mickey,  Pete,  and Minnie.  Now, the formers'  current  voice actors,  Russi  Taylor  and  Will  Ryan.     Okay,  Will Ryan isn't  Pete's current VA but to be fair, he has voiced the character before and other additional  voice actors such as Jess Harnell  (Cedric from Sofia The First to me) can be heard in this short.  Now,  with that out of the way, let's begin the review.

Even the title card invokes a feeling of a traditional  Mickey Mouse short that Walt would've worked on.   Nice work.




The Plot


Our  short starts with Mickey leaving his house and getting  on a hay ride with all of his friends including Horace Horsecollar, Clarabelle Cow, and Minnie, who he helps onto the hay ride in a cute scene by making his leg a staircase.

And  oh my,  just the animation here. Hmph,  this is to die for.  This is just gorgeous stuff.   I feel like, I've really been transported back in time and as if this short should be on one  of those Walt Disney Treasures collections.    After Mickey  gets on, who should show up nasty old Pete in his jalopy as he knocks his horn that wants to make way for the future and  gazes on Minnie.  Mickey takes notice of this and puts Clarabelle in front of him.  But uh oh,  Pete has kidnapped Minnie.

Pete is angry at  Mickey's prank and then hurls Mickey along with Horace into the screen causing them to crash through and land in the modern world. 

Now  there are two things that need addressing here, the change in animation style from hand-drawn to computer animated.  Honestly,  the flow of it was smooth and nicely  done and secondly,  I find that short's intent with this moment was to make the short seem as though Mickey landed in the theater of the audience watching Get A Horse!   From the screen,  Pete taunts  Mickey as he still has Minnie and Mickey tries to find a way to get back.

As  this  happens,  Mickey  reveals that the screen is wider than than first thought and just then who should come up but Horace wearing a Captain America shirt and with someone's cell phone.  Now,  I find  the shirt that Horace is wearing as being a way of acknowledging all of Disney, now that they own Marvel.     And  Mickey sees that  Horace  has   Milk Duds  and popcorn and makes  Horace  into a plane  and uses the Milk Duds  as his ammo. 

This  was really  funny  and just a great callback to how shorts used to do stuff like this.   Alas, they end up crashing  on the stage  and   just then a smartphone  that Horace apparently  took goes off and this gives  Mickey another idea.   Mickey  calls  Pete  on his phone and through sprays the foam   of a fire extinguisher.   We later see  Pete land  on a frozen  lake  and  Mickey pokes  a hole in the screen causing the water to leak and to bring Pete,  Minnie and the other characters to the modern world.

And  then we get a great chase sequence that incorporates both styles of animation as  Pete chases the character in and out of the screen.

 









Pete  snatches  Minnie  again and punches Mickey out of the way.  The others try to get back into the screen but their plan backfires and just causes the screen to flip upside down.  Minnie, then gets an idea to have Mickey flip the screen again and we get various different moments of  Pete in pain such as having his car land on him.  And this goes on for a while,   Minnie  then drives Pete's car and ends up tearing the screen down and we now have the 1928 styled characters in CGI, which  reminds me of Epic  Mickey.  Speaking of which,  keep your eye out for a cameo from Oswald The Lucky Rabbit.

Mickey, then pulls  a new screen down waving goodbye and Pete's  pants flap  open up to say The End!    This is  how you honor Mickey Mouse.  This short  took Mickey  back to his heyday and showed people  what a classic Mickey short was like by bridging the world of old Disney with new Disney and it was never mean-spirited and never made you hate the characters.  This short honored the legacy of  Mickey Mouse and who he is by showing people what he was like early on in his career.   If  the 2013  series  of shorts, had taken their cues from Get A Horse!,  I wouldn't  hate so many of them.   Some of those shorts are insults to these characters whereas this one knew who the characters were and it was clear that people behind this short love Mickey Mouse and cherish him and wanted to do right by him whereas  I feel like the people working on the 2013 series for the most part are just there to collect a paycheck and don't care about Mickey's image at all. 

Characters

Mickey  Mouse  voiced  by Walt  Disney

Honestly,  I loved watching Mickey in this short and the fact that he was voiced by Walt was even cooler to me.   That helped in making the first half feel like an actual short from late '20s.   Bravo, bravo.   Mickey was the scrapper little hero trying to do right and save his gal.   This short knew who Mickey Mouse is and treated him with the respect that he deserves.

Horace Horsecollar 

I was pleasantly surprised to see Horace get such a large role again as it's been ages since we've got to see him do anything of substance with Mickey and this was nice and just a lot of fun to watch.


Minnie  voiced  by  Marcellite Garner and Russi Taylor

I'll be honest and say  that I could not tell where the voices came in but I'm  assuming the footage for Garner was used in the beginning and Taylor voiced Minnie in the latter half of the short. Either way,  she did a great job of capturing the early  Minnie Mouse.


Villain

Pete voiced by Billy Bletcher  & Will Ryan

Again,  like with Minnie,  I could not tell where one voice stopped and the other started.   And  honestly, it was so nice to get to see Pete be truly villainous again.  This was the old Pete that I love and is my  favorite Disney villain.  Because this short brought  back the bully  side of Pete that had been missing for years and it was a treat to see that again.



My  Final Thoughts


This short is amazing and this is what  I  expect from a short celebrating Mickey's career.  This is easily one of the best Mickey shorts to come out in a long time.   It  is just so good.   I can't say anything more about this short other than I love it. Peace!