The Duck Hunt

A Walt Disney MICKEY MOUSE Cartoon.

Mickey finds THE DUCK HUNT he's taken Pluto on will become a most surprising experience.

With a sparse plot and action driven almost completely by the soundtrack, this is an amusing black & white cartoon. Once again, the Disney animators indulge themselves with numerous underwear/posterior gags. Walt Disney supplies Mickey's voice.

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.

While Pluto may be blamed here, it is Mickey who is incompetent at virtually everything he does (except for his musical talents). Here, he and his dog decide to go duck hunting. The problem is that he has no clue how to use a shotgun and the ducks are worthy adversaries. What I noticed is that so much of this is just a rehash of other episodes previously done. Not all that clever.

The story is on the predictable side here, and while a lot of the gags are funny, especially with the fleas either marching behind Pluto or parachuting off him or Pluto managing to fool the other ducks, there is not much new either. However, the animation is really beautifully done and the scenes with Mickey and Pluto's reflections in the water and Pluto in the water and you see his shadow shows a good level of sophistication. The music is full of character and does much to enhance the action as it always did do with the Disney(and Looney Tunes as well for that matter) cartoons. Mickey is still as likable as ever, and Pluto, helped by some fine work with his expressions, is typically cute and energetic.

In conclusion, recommended but not one of my favourites ever. 8/10 Bethany Cox

This is an interesting cartoon because it exists in two versions--the original black & white and a colorized version released decades later. While I am NOT a fan of colorizing (and thank goodness the fad died out), it doesn't look too bad on old cartoons. However, it's easy to tell which version is colorized, as the colors tend to be in pastel shades and less of the more traditional primary colors actually used in the early to mid 1930s.

The summary to this cartoon pretty much explains the entire cartoon, so my summarizing it here makes little sense. The bottom line is that Mickey and Pluto go duck hunting and have a lot of adventures. The quality of the animation is, like all Disney films of the era, clearly better than the competition. And, most importantly, this one is fun and works about as well today as when it debuted 80 years ago. Well worth seeing.