The Country Cousin

So what if this is, as another reviewer noted, the stuff of a hundred Tom and Jerry cartoons to come? The character animation is the real attraction here, and it's excellent. This is some of the best drunken mouse animation I've ever seen, and that's saying something.

It's true, they've turned the actual storyline into a goofy succession of tabletop gags with a chaotic climax tacked on (much like the one to appear at the end of the Pink Elephants sequence in Dumbo), and so the short as a whole is somewhat less satisfying than it could be, but the individual sequences are all nice - I particularly liked the bit with the sliced bread, and the mirror routine straight out of Duck Soup. Monty just sort of disappears at the end, doesn't he? Oh well, so maybe it's not the most memorable thing ever, but it's still a polished piece of cartoonery, to be sure.

In this rather dull 9-minute cartoon a hick mouse visits his well-to-do cousin in the big city where they get up to all the usual mousy hi-jinks. Although this predates the first Tom and Jerry short by a number of years the set-up and scenes will seem overly familiar to you.

Based on Aesop's fable "The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse", there's nothing particularly memorable about this cartoon. The mice peak out of holes, scurry across tables, help themselves to food, agitating the house cat etc. It's fairly standard stuff, ending in the hick mouse being frightened out of town and dashing back to the country along the railroad tracks. It's amazing that this managed to win an Academy Award, I can't imagine how dull the other nominees were that year.

This Disney short is well-executed visually (as you might expect from Disney in the 1930s) but isn't really all that memorable or impressive for all that. I'm frankly somewhat puzzled at its nomination for an Academy Award and more puzzled that it won. Perhaps it was more impressive in 1936 than it is today. It isn't a bad cartoon-there just isn't anything exceptional about it that struck me other than the visuals. It runs from time to time on the Ink and Paint Club.

Walt Disney's October 1936 "The Country Cousin" won the 9th Academy Awards Best Animated Short Film for the year. As part of Disney's 'Silly Symphony' series, the nine-minute film, directed by Wilfred Jackson, concerns the hick-from-the-sticks mouse Podunk, who pays a visit to his sophisticated cousin Abner living in the city. His lack of refinement is visible when Abner shows him a normal human food dining table display in the household he's living in. Like an uncivilized barbarian, Podunk attacks the food while finishing it off with Champagne. The mouse gets drunk and ends up in all sorts of trouble.

The entire narrative takes place without a word heard between the two mice. "The characters are developed through body language," notes film reviewer Dave Sindelar, "and with a bit of help from the musical score." Years later, Disneyland Records recreated an audio version of "The Country Cousins" with actor Sterling Holloway narrating a 30-minute story wrapped around the 1936 cartoon. The 1961 vinyl LP record was issued as part of a record label subsidiary Walt's older brother Roy convince him to establish in 1956.

For those wondering why this would win an Academy Award, consider the year and the level of action animation. The dinner table scene is excellent, with all the possibilities. The mice are really excellent personalities, each with their own beings. Yes, the plot is simple. It's one of those portrayals of the grass always being greener. It's the classic Aesop's Fable of the Country Mouse and the City Mouse.