Boat Builders

Before VHS tape and DVD technology, many old movies and old cartoons were re-released every few years. I was a preteen in the early 1950's and vividly remember first seeing the 1938 "Boat Builders" just before a Roy Rogers Saturday matinée flick at the local theater. It was the funniest cartoon I had ever seen. I laughed aloud continually through the entire seven minutes as Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse, Goofy, and their animated friends build a boat and launch it with outrageous slapstick humor aplenty. The whole audience joined me in the laughter. Several years later I watched "Boat Builders" again. It was still funny and enjoyable, the animation still amazing. I'm rating this cartoon from the standpoint of a preteen. For youngsters yesterday, today, and tomorrow, this one is a winner.

Boat Builders was a solid Walt Disney cartoon. Featuring Mickey, Goofy and Donald, it has some really entertaining moments. My only real complaint is that some of the animation isn't always that great, there is the occasional stiff movement or the occasional flat background. That said the music is wonderful, and so is the voice acting, while Walt Disney and Clarence Nash both turn in fine work, it is Pinto Colvig as Goofy who comes off best.

Then there are parts that are truly funny, the scene with the loose plank was funny, but the best was when Goofy thinks a mermaid figurine is a real woman and starts chasing after her when Mickey takes her away. Overall, I enjoyed this cartoon. 8/10 Bethany Cox

A Walt Disney MICKEY MOUSE Cartoon.

Folding-kit BOAT BUILDERS Mickey, Goofy & Donald attempt to put together their small ship with predictably disastrous results.

Featuring first rate animation & a very funny plot, this classic little film reunites the three buddies in another cartoon not dissimilar to CLOCK CLEANERS (1937), their hit of the year before. Goofy & the Duck carry most of the show, with their voice artists - Pinto Colvig & Clarence Nash - giving topnotch performances. Voiced by Walt Disney, Mickey easily steps into the position of good guy & regular fellow. Miss Minnie has a quick cameo and sharp-eyed movie mavens will spot Horace Horsecollar & Clarabelle Cow among the crowd at the launching.

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 will always pay off.

This is a classic Disney cartoon featuring all of Mickey, Donald, Goofy and Minnie. The former three buys a boat kit and attempts to build a gigantic ship out of the it - it's like buying the parts and building a miniature model. But here, in funny cartoon style, the three characters decide to christen the ship after completion of the assembling and take it out to sea.

While assembling the ship, Mickey, Donald and Goofy meet all sorts of weird mishaps, from a rolled-up plank deck that won't cooperate to Goofy taking the boat's statue for a real woman who adores him. It really sends some good laughs your way and it's definitely very entertaining. You're in for huge laughs when the ending of the cartoon comes and Minnie gives the green light for the ship to sail!

Grade A

MADE DURING WHAT was probably the zenith of the Mickey/Donald/Goofy stint as the Disney Studios' answer to the screen comedy team. The beauty of the shorts were indeed becoming a victim to their own achievement; as well as providing a springboard to the up and coming succession of full length animated features. (SNOW WHITE, PINNOCHOIO, FANTASIA, BAMBI, DUMBO, etc.) MUCH LIKE SO many other entries in the series, the premise is at once both simple yet somehow quite brilliant in its execution. The "plot" of such a short calls for each of the comic threesome starts out together and shares several other sight-gag laden scenes. The action typically gives two sequences each to the three individually.

AS FOR THE unique aspects of this entry, it lies in the tranquility generated by a seascape (even an artificial & animated one). Never has "Going Down To The Sea In Ships" has never done in such surroundings, being rendered in the most richly hued Technicolor filming imaginable.

AS IS THE norm, the short ends up with the protagonists no further ahead in their construction of the boat from model-type kit. And it is this that leaves our comic trio of on screen heroes ready to fight another day.