The Hockey Champ

I'm always partial to the Disney cartoons set in winter with the quaint Victorian looks to the countryside and enchanting atmosphere (such as 1935s 'On Ice'). It looks brilliant here in this cartoon and I'm pleased to say it's one of the more inventive and clever Donald Duck shorts.

This time round the irritable duck is skating around on a frozen lake when his nephews appear for a game of hockey. He shows off to them his hockey trophy (kept in his jacket) and brags about how he's the best hockey player in the world. As you can guess already, he gets too big for his boots (err...webbed feet) and Huey, Duey and Louie play no end of tricks on him.

If only he would keep his big mouth shut once in a while huh?

In this Disney cartoon, Donald takes his nephews to a game of hockey, but Donald says that they know nothing about the sport, touting his own champion self. Donald wins the first round with his nephews and then gets a little cocky and blindfolds himself while taking his nephews on a second game. However, the kids get a little to aggravated and hits Donald around like the hockey puck itself.

I first saw this animated short as part of Disney home video collection called "Kids is Kids," which my mom used to rent for me when I was a little kid. Even has a kid, I didn't like this one much as I thought the characters didn't really get a long and were too mean-spirited toward each other. While, the humor might some little kids laugh a lot older kids or adults probably fine this one not-so-entertaining.

Grade D

I noticed one review that complained that 'the characters didn't really get along and were mean-spirited toward each other'. Well, this is very true in "The Hockey Champ"...but also in MOST cartoons featuring Donald and his nephews! I can only assume they haven't seen that many of these Disney shorts.

When the short begins, Donald is skating around the lake--pretending he's the Olympic skating champion, Sonja Henie. Soon, the nephews arrive and Donald tries to show them how a champion hockey player plays the game. Mostly, however, what you see are the nephews tormenting Donald.

To me, this is an average Donald and nephews film...no better, no worse.

This Donald Duck short is wonderfully animated and very entertaining. The story is simple, Donald challenges his nephews to a game of ice hockey leading to all sorts of winter hi-jinks. The winter setting inspires many creative sight gags, and the Disney gang uses them to the extreme. Donald's opening figure skating scene is a great piece of animation.

A perfect 10 for 10

This short animation from the Walt Disney vaults is a must see for any hockey fan enthusiast. The color is fantastic, and the interaction with Donald Duck and his young and rambunctious three (3) nephews on ice skates is such a wonderful piece of cartoon nostalgia that I wished that the new Disney films that get released in the theaters with their half a billion dollar budgets would wow their audiences by showing this 1939 short 7 minute cartoon prior to their main feature film which is what I was used to seeing back in the 1960's.

Parents and children would flock back to the theaters and talk more about the preliminary cartoon short they just saw than the multi-million dollar CGI enhanced feature films that are cookie cutters of the previous years action/adventure films.