The Simple Things

A Walt Disney MICKEY MOUSE Cartoon.

Mickey & Pluto enjoy THE SIMPLE THINGS in life, like fishing together at the beach - until a pesky clam and an obnoxious seagull begin to ruin their day.

Although only 24 years old, Mickey chose this routine cartoon as his final film before retiring from theatrical animation, preferring to devote his time to television and theme park work. An immense celebrity by this time, but with his greatest cartoons long behind him, Mickey could well afford to rest on his laurels as the iconic Everyman of American animation. His retirement would last for 30 years, when he would return in 1983 for a nominal role in MICKEY'S CHRISTMAS CAROL. His big screen appearances since then have been very sporadic.

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.

By 1953, Mickey Mouse's great short subjects were behind him. The experimental excitement of Steamboat Willie, the atmosphere and adventure of The Klondike Kid, the silly fun of Ye Olden Days-- all gave way to the watering down of Mickey's character and the decreasing profitability of the short films. Sure, those black and white cartoons are technically crude in comparison to the later shorts of the 40s and 50s, but they have more character than the Technicolor blandness of that later period.

As far as Disney shorts go, you can do worse than the final of the classic era Mickey Mouse shorts, The Simple Things. It's not a clinker by any means, as it possesses a few charming moments and competent character animation. But it is certainly not terribly entertaining or re-watchable. More focus is given to Pluto and the hungry seagull which torments him more so than Mickey, showing just how bland his character had become by the early 1950s.

As a big fan of 1930s Mickey Mouse, it depresses me how dull the character became, but at least we have later shorts like Runaway Brain and the direct to DVD Mickey, Donald, and Goofy: The Three Musketeers to compensate for decades of snooze fests.

In this Disney cartoon short, Mickey and Pluto go fishing by the beach (kind of makes you want to relax on a quiet, sunny day). Pluto has a run-in with a clam and Mickey's bait are chased by a hungry seagull.

As the Mickey's final cartoon in the Walt Era, the story could have been a lot better. It seemed that both Mickey and Pluto got the bad end of the stick in the plot, with Pluto getting the clam caught in his mouth and Mickey's fishing trip getting spoiled by the stupid, hungry and irritating seagull.

I remembered watching this cartoon as a kid and, while I enjoyed seeing Mickey and Pluto on screen, the seagull annoyed the heck out of me. Not one of the better Mickey cartoons.

Grade D---

I didn't know until looking at the reviews on Letterboxd and IMDb trivia that this was the last Mickey Mouse cartoon that Walt Disney worked on, in other words the final one that was a short in this format (I have to think Mickey Mouse showed up *somewhere* in the 13 ensuing years until Disney died, maybe someone can bring this info up). It certainly was a good one to leave off on, and mostly because it goes back to the spirit of the early Mickey Mouse shorts: Mickey having lots of gags involving other animals that are screwing around with him.

Of course it's not quite the same since we also have Pluto, but the raison d'etre of Mickey Mouse can be seen here just as well as in those late 20's and early 30's shots (it's not quite that quality, but then what is). It's a lot of fun to see the hijinks ensue with the clams and then the seagulls, and the light but constantly mounting touch that Disney brought, where a gag builds on top of another and it's about the affronting personalities and clashing of conflicts more than anything, makes it memorable.

I think that it helps to watch it as a kid initially, as I got to do (thanks Disney Classics VHS series in the 80's, which introduced me and other kids to Steamboat Willie by the way), so that the history of it and that significance can come later. If you take it on its own, it's not any masterwork but it's fun and engaging and cute and that's what counts.

The Simple Things (1953)

*** (out of 4)

Delightful animated short from Disney has Mickey and Pluto going fishing but both are terrorized by some local creatures. Pluto comes under attack from a clam, which leads to Mickey and his bait coming under attack by a seagull. THE SIMPLE THINGS is best remembered today for being the final Mickey short during his classic early days. With that in mind, the historic aspect alone makes this here worth watching even though the actual short isn't the greatest that the mouse appeared in. Still, there are enough good moments and laughs here to make it worth sitting through with the highlight clearly being the sequence where the clam gets inside Pluto's mouth and causes him some trouble. As you'd expect the animation is extremely good and we're also treated to a good score.