Window Cleaners

As a fan of Disney, Donald and Pluto I was all for seeing Window Cleaners. While not one of my favourites, it is very entertaining regardless. As ever I loved the crispness and colour of the animation and the energetic character that the music had. The gags, while slower to unfold, are well timed and very amusing, though there have been more hilarious gags in other Donald cartoons. The best ones were those when Donald shouts down the drain and the one with the bolts. The story is interesting and nimbly paced, but it is one particular sequence and what is done with Donald that makes Window Cleaners. Pluto's role is not very prominent, mainly to sleep actually, while the bee is a good foil. The sequence where the bee lifts his stinger up to get at Donald is beautifully animated and as a child I remembered in a way feeling inspired by it for some reason. Donald on the other hand is a sort of everyman person, but not one ordinary everyman. You see several sides of his character, first he is happy with not a care in the world, later on he is angrier and more easily frustrated, something I found very interesting to watch. Overall, a good cartoon if not a great one for me. 8/10 Bethany Cox

Donald and Pluto team up once again in another hilarious cartoon short, where Donald is in charge of cleaning the windows of an apartment high-rise (brave of Donald doing so without any safety harness!), while Pluto attempts to help. Unfortunately, the lazy dog rather sleep, and Donald gets himself tangling with an angry bee.

It's another beautifully animated short with plenty of laugh-out-loud moments; Donald was absolutely hilarious in this one, from him attempting to wake up Pluto with his cackling voice to him accidentally splashing a buckle of bolts onto a window instead of water.

Donald's singing is sure to crack anybody up, and his little fight with the bee was pretty entertaining. It's just too bad Pluto wasn't of much help in this story.

Funny stuff here!

Grade A

Window Cleaners (1940)

*** (out of 4)

Donald and Pluto are on their job of cleaning windows when they run into one issue after another. While up cleaning windows Donald decides to be mean to a baby bee and this leads to his downfall.

WINDOW CLEANERS is a pretty good short from Disney as they give you the typical high quality animation but also a pretty good story with lots of laughs. There's no question that the highlight deals with the bee, the rather cruel prank played by Donald and of course the bee's revenge. Fans of Donald and Pluto will certainly enjoy this short since there are several good laughs and the two share some great chemistry even if they're never actually together.

This cartoon reminded me a lot of a previous Donald short called Clock Cleaners. The same high rise/vertigo gags are used but that doesn't stop it from being funny.

Donald is washing windows while Pluto down on the ground sends up fresh buckets of water. But he's to busy napping and ignores Donald when prompted with a hook to the head. Instead Donald snares a bucket of bolts (why would a window washer have a bucket of bolts?) and smashes a huge pane of glass with it. But his troubles aren't over as a bee makes it his mission to sting Donald for soaking him.

Despite some erection/impotence imagery at the end with the bee struggling to make a decent sting, it's amusing.

Donald is window washing on a high-rise scaffold while his co-worker PLUTO is snoozing instead of passing up a bucket of water. Donald makes a hilariously vain attempt to waken the sleeping dog but nothing works. When Pluto does wake up, he sends the wrong bucket and Donald throws what he supposes is a pail of water against the window but is really a pail full of bolts.

More misadventures follow when he plays a prank on a busy bee enjoying himself on a flowerpot--"Buzz-Buzz" again--and the bee finds ways of getting even when Donald sprinkles him with water. One of the bee's prank has Donald walking dangerously along a flag pole but managing to hold his footing--sort of borrowing from a Harold Lloyd comedy.

He and the bee go through some strenuous routines (all of which were done better in some of the other "B" movies), but by the story's end the bee is too exhausted to put his stinger into Donald.

Amusing and must have been a welcome addition to double features back in the good old days.