Canine Casanova

A Walt Disney PLUTO Cartoon.

Pluto the CANINE CASANOVA follows his heartthrob Dinah everywhere - even into the dog pound...

While the animation in this little film is routine, the story & characters are quite enjoyable, especially the ending with its exciting escape from the shotgun wielding dogcatcher. Pluto's perennial nemesis Butch appears as one of the incarcerated canines.

Walt Disney (1901-1966) was always intrigued by drawings. As a lad in Marceline, Missouri, he sketched farm animals on scraps of paper; later, as an ambulance driver in France during the First World War, he drew figures on the sides of his vehicle. Back in Kansas City, along with artist Ub Iwerks, Walt developed a primitive animation studio that provided animated commercials and tiny cartoons for the local movie theaters. Always the innovator, his ALICE IN CARTOONLAND series broke ground in placing a live figure in a cartoon universe. Business reversals sent Disney & Iwerks to Hollywood in 1923, where Walt's older brother Roy became his lifelong business manager & counselor. When a mildly successful series with Oswald The Lucky Rabbit was snatched away by the distributor, the character of Mickey Mouse sprung into Walt's imagination, ensuring Disney's immortality. The happy arrival of sound technology made Mickey's screen debut, STEAMBOAT WILLIE (1928), a tremendous audience success with its use of synchronized music. The SILLY SYMPHONIES soon appeared, and Walt's growing crew of marvelously talented animators were quickly conquering new territory with full color, illusions of depth and radical advancements in personality development, an arena in which Walt's genius was unbeatable. Mickey's feisty, naughty behavior had captured millions of fans, but he was soon to be joined by other animated companions: temperamental Donald Duck, intellectually-challenged Goofy and energetic Pluto. All this was in preparation for Walt's grandest dream - feature length animated films. Against a blizzard of doomsayers, Walt persevered and over the next decades delighted children of all ages with the adventures of Snow White, Pinocchio, Dumbo, Bambi & Peter Pan. Walt never forgot that his fortunes were all started by a mouse, or that simplicity of message and lots of hard work always pay off.

In this Disney cartoon, Pluto tries to court Dinah the dachshund. However, the stuck-up dog rejects Pluto's affections. It's just a lot of back and fourth courting and rejections between the two dogs, and the more exciting action doesn't happen until Dinah gets captured and sent to the dog pound. Predictably, Pluto rescues Dinah and narrowly escapes the dog catcher.

Not much comedy in this one - a typical dog romance cartoon. Didn't care for Dinah too much as she presented herself to be uncaring and vain. Pluto should have left her at the pound to face her own consequences.

Grade C-

Canine Casanova doesn't really do much fresh with its premise, some of it is predictable, and the climax could have had much more tension than it had. Dinah is charming and adorable if little more than a plot device. Pluto however is his cute and energetic self, and the short still manages to be sweet and funny. The animation is bright and colourful, with everything drawn very nicely and the music is lush and characterful, synchronising with the action wonderfully(that always was one of the biggest strengths of the Disney shorts).

Overall, not a favourite and somewhat unexceptional, but nice and solid stuff that still manages to entertain and charm. 7/10 Bethany Cox