Daddy Duck

A Walt Disney DONALD DUCK Cartoon.

For some unfathomable reason, Donald yearns to become a DADDY DUCK and adopts Joey, an unruly baby kangaroo.

This is a fun, but completely unremarkable, little film. Although cute & full of spunk, young Joey would not appear in any other Disney cartoon. Clarence "Ducky" Nash gives voice to Donald.

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, Bambi, Peter Pan and Mr. Toad. 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.

Donald Duck yearns to be a father. So he adopts a baby kangaroo.

Of course he does. I looked at a copy that ran six minutes and fourteen seconds. Perhaps I am missing some key bit of motivation here that might help to make this Donald Duck cartoon make more sense than that opening sentence would seem to admit.

Oh well, once we've established that Donald adopts a kangaroo for reasons that will never be explained, it's a good cartoon.

Donald Duck adopts a baby kangaroo, which turns out to be more than he could handle. He's disobedient, makes faces, and too hyper. Donald tries his best to take care of him while answering phone calls from the lady at the adoption center, reminding Donald of what to do to take care of the kangaroo. That was actually the funniest part in the short, while the rest is just chaotic stuff concentrated on the annoying creature.

Grade D+

For some reason, Donald goes to an adoption agency and adopts a baby kangaroo. The thing turns out to be manic and destructive. It tears the house apart and is in constant attack mode. What we have are a series of attack and defense things. Of course, we get back to the whole "Why adopt a kangaroo?" to begin with. But then it's Donald Duck and he's a cartoon character, known for confrontational situations.