Mickey's Service Station

There are a couple milestones which were achieved with this Disney cartoon. First, it was the first time Donald, Goofy and Mickey were teamed up for a film. And, thoughout the rest of the 1930s, the trio would become about as familiar as FDR and the Depression. Second, it's the final black & white Disney cartoon.

The trio all work for a service station. An armed and dangerous Pete arrives and tells them they have 10 minutes to make his car stop squeaking or, he implies, he'll kill them!! So, they do as you'd expect...and make a mess of things. After all, Donald and Goofy are involved. So what's Pete really gonna do?

This is a good though not great Disney short...which still makes it far superior to its competition. While it has lots of milestones, its quality is no better than any of the team's later work. Very watchable and enjoyable...but not their best stuff.

The best Disney shorts were when they put a Disney character or characters in an everyday situation and let the chaos begin. This one was an early example of them moving away from the song and dance cartoons which they had been doing for so long and into that sort of thing. The antics that Mickey, Donald, and Goofy go through to fix Pete's car are genuinely funny, with a wonderfully loud end. A very good watch.

A Walt Disney MICKEY MOUSE Cartoon.

Bullying gangster Pegleg Pete leaves his roadster at MICKEY'S SERVICE STATION for Mickey, Goofy & Donald to find the source of a squeak...or else!

Here is one of Mickey's final black & white cartoons and it is excellent. Watching the three hapless friends bring their chaotic cacophony to a climaxing crescendo - including a satisfying comeuppance for Pete - is tremendously funny.

Walt Disney (1901-1966) was always intrigued by pictures & 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 comic 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 childlike simplicity of message and lots of hard work always pay off.

This is an earlier Disney cartoon featuring Mickey, Donald and Goofy. Here, they are working at a service station and were given the daunting task of getting a squeaking noise out of grumpy Pete's car in 10 minutes. What results are hilarious scenes after the other, from Goofy hammering his hand by mistake to Donald tripping over buckets of oil. Every attempt they made to fix the car ended being one laughable mishap after the other. They ended up getting the squeak out, but got the best out of the car and ultimately made Pete getting more than he bargained more.

It's pure entertainment, slapstick humor and laughs from start to finish. Mickey is his determined self and Goofy is his accident-prone character. Donald got his classic, fiery-tempered and voice-crackling personality. Great stuff!

Grade A