Disney in Review

[Metal Snake]

I enjoyed The Three Caballeros as a kid, but I do like these reviews. I got a good laugh out of you grading the Spanish Disney film with question marks.

[terminoob]

Alright, time for another package film. I hope this one is actually, you know, good.

Well that looks... interesting.

The Martins and the Coys

Oh Christ, this thing has ten parts? Look, I don't care if most of the staff got drafted into World War 2; put this stuff to a halt until you can make real movies, okay? None of this "package" crap.

Okay, well, actually, I kind of take that back. This segment is pretty good. It's a story that's very reminiscent of the feud between the Hatfields and the McCoys. If you don't know what that is, then you should probably read more. The whole thing is narrated by King's Men, which was a popular band at the time - the movie, I mean; they didn't narrate Hatfields and McCoys. This part escalates pretty quickly, because everyone dies about two minutes in. But don't worry; they all go to heaven. Because apparently that's where you go when you die in a shoot out. However, it soon takes a turn for the worst when there's only a guy and a girl left on either side, and I say turn for the worst because it's obvious where this was headed. That's right, the only thing worse than dying in a shoot out: marriage!

Yeah, it became one of those "make love, not war" things pretty fast. Which I guess makes sense. I mean, it came out during World War 2, so that's a pretty easy moral to jump to in a movie to try and raise everyone's spirits. And things seem to be going great between the two lovers. They're happy, they're married, they're square dancing. ...Uh, actually, that sounds pretty terrible. I'd rather be dead and up on one of the clouds with the Martins or the Coys instead of square dancing or being married. And guess what? So would the newly-weds! Because this takes another turn for the worst when they start almost killing each other. Well, actually, the girl's the one that's almost killing the guy; the guy is just kind of a wuss and gets punched out. It's pretty entertaining. If the rest are as entertaining as this one, then I won't mind this package movie much at all. I might even enjoy it kind of.

Blue Bayou

This animation was originally meant to be in Fantasia, so of course this was super artsy. It's three minutes of singing, coupled with animation of a blue bayou. Yeah it's pretty and all, but... eh, okay, it's pretty. I'll let it slide.

All the Cats Join In

This segment is great, though it might just be my inner Harlem renaissance man saying that. It's jazz-based, and I love jazz in movies. It's classy. It's sophisticated. It's fantastic. What makes this even better is the fact that it's animated as it goes. I'll explain.

We start the segment with a pencil flipping open a sketchbook and doodling a cat. Not happy with the result, the pencil erases the cat and instead draws a boy. And it starts. The pencil draws in a jukebox, and then a telephone, and then phone wires, and everything, and it does it as it goes. I personally think it's brilliant. It's so different from regular Disney, but it's not completely out-there in terms of insanity; the concept is something I'd expect from Looney Tunes, except it's done in the Disney style. And the music is catchy and upbeat and as great as it can be. Though again, I only think this because jazz and skat are two great genres of music.

The dancing scene is classic. Sure it's not classic in the sense that Snow White is classic, but it's classic in the sense that it's the raw essence of classic cartoons of the era. It's wild, it's crazy, it's completely off-the-walls. The proportions are weird, the poses are ridiculous, and nothing makes sense. It's fantastic. Some of the dances are real, some are completely exaggerated, and some don't have any rhyme or reason to them and they're just doing it because it's a cartoon and they have the power to. The entire segment is just kids in a malt shop dancing along to jazz, and it couldn't have been done any better.

Without You

And... coming off the back of that segment, is a love song. A very... slow... and depressing... love song...

Come on, Disney. You're better than this.

Yeah it's cool that you're showing off vintage AMVs and stuff, because it's really nothing more than just random animations with a song in the background, but still. I mean yeah, the singing's pretty good, but still.

But still.

Yeah yeah, World War 2 and everything. Deployment makes people sad. Love song that people are supposed to relate to. I get that. It's fine for the message. I'm not feeling it, though. I mean, yeah, this segment is great. It's doing what it's supposed to. A love song that has "I'm so lost without you" as lyrics. Wives of men in the war can relate to that; hell, people in general can relate to that. It gets the point across loud and clear. I can't really crap on it for that, no matter how much I may not enjoy straight-up animations with song that don't have story to them. So sure, it's fine. Let's leave it at that before I change my mind.

Casey at the Bat

Oh great. This story. Okay, I don't know about you guys, but I heard this about 50 times throughout elementary school and middle school. I know it backwards and forwards. It was great the first few times, and then it went downhill from there. We had assemblies dedicated to a single person reading this. I absolutely detest this story with every fiber of my being. Disney can't do anything to change my mind; hell, Christoper Walken reading it couldn't change my mind. It's a terrible story with a complete douchebag-bro of a protagonist with a predictable ending. If you haven't heard this story, then I envy you.

If you couldn't already tell by the title, this is about baseball. The most boring and controversial sport ever nowadays (no, I'm not still mad about the Red Sox... shut up). We start with two players getting out, and two players getting on base. And then, Casey got up to the plate. You can compare Casey to Babe Ruth. He's this dude that's way too big for his britches and everyone loves him and no one thinks he can do wrong. He's the anchor for the team. The first two pitches thrown to Casey are deemed "unworthy" and Casey lets them by; the fans are outraged that the umpire could even think to call them strikes, even though they clearly went straight down the line. God I fucking hate sports fans; even animated ones. The third pitch to Casey is where things get serious. He has to hit or the team loses. He's Casey, though, so obviously he'll hit.

Nope. The guy strikes out and cries like a baby.

That's it. That's the story. It's about a guy who thinks he's too damn good for everyone and then ends up costing his team the game. I don't think I'm allowed to vocalize my actual opinion on this story on this website, because the language I'd use is, what some might call, "R rated".

I'm a foul mouth. There, I said it. Baseball pun.

​Two Silhouettes

Fun fact: I don't have any friggin' idea how to spell "silhouette" off the top of my head. Why is that word so hard to spell? I always need to spell it for some reason and I never know where to put any of the letters.

More AMV. Disney did the whole "live-action with animation" thing again, and it's much more successful here; probably because they're just silhouettes instead of actual characters. Not much to say here. Song sung well with animation to back it up.

Peter and the Wolf

YES. Peter and the Wolf is great. The original claymation continues to blow me away every time I watch it. It's too good. Each character being represented by a different instrument is just flat-out awesome.

We start with the narrator, whom I don't particularly care for every much, explaining the different instruments associated with each character. Once that's out of the way, we get to the story. Peter wants to go out and kill the wolf, but since he's only like seven years old, his grandpa thinks that's a terrible idea because he's liable to get himself killed. Peter doesn't care and throws caution to the wind and goes out to hunt the wolf anyway. Man, I wish I was that cool when I was a kid. I also wish I was voiced by a string quartet, but that's a story for another day.

Along the way to find the wolf, Peter runs into Sacha the bird, Sonya the duck, and Ivan the cat. All the animals seem to already know Peter, and one another, so the story turns into a group of friends trying to overcome an obstacle. Sound familiar? It should, because it's every adventure plot ever.

Soon enough, Peter and friends run into the wolf, fresh off of eating Little Red Riding Hood and that other boy who cried a lot, and he's here to see if he can make it three for three. Though Peter thought he could kill the wolf, it turns out that he's too scared because he's seven and runs away with his friends. Sonya, however, gets trapped in a chase scene and is soon presumed to be dead. Sucks to suck. Sacha is having none of the wolf's BS today and tries to beat him up, but he can't because he's a bird. The wolf almost eats Sacha as well, if it weren't for Ivan and Peter tying a rope around the wolf's tail and hogtying him like he's a greased pig or something. Sacha goes to a group of hunters for help, but by the time they come to the rescue, the wolf is already tied upside down to a branch.

In case you forgot, Ivan is a cat and Peter is seven. And they tied a wolf to a branch. Upside down.

Yeah.

In the end, the entire town has a celebration because the wolf has finally been caught and will no longer terrorize folklore and fairytale characters ever again! Everyone's super happy that they can go on their merry way without having to worry about this one wolf eating them. I'd burst their blissful ignorance-induced bubble by saying that there isn't just one wolf in the entire world, but... it'll be fun in the sequels. Unfortunately, Sacha is still mourning over the presumed loss of Sonya... notice how I say presumed? Yeah. It's a children's story. No one's dying. Sonya was just hiding in a tree.

After You've Gone

More jazz, which is always a plus in my book. Though we're back to just music with animation, which I could do without. This one's a little fun though, because everything's anthropomorphized and kooky. But yeah, not much going on here besides good music and crazy instruments running amuck.

Johnny Fedora and Alice Blue Bonnet

I don't know what's scarier; the fact that the hats in this are sentient, or that people wear fedoras casually. Regardless, it's a pretty weird set-up, but overall a pretty decent story. Johnny and Alice fall in love when they're together in a department store window, but they get separated when Alice gets sold. Johnny doesn't know if he can be happy again without Alice, because they planned a future together and such because apparently hats can do that. However, Johnny soon gets bought and he's able to search for Alice while on his owner's head. I'm not sure I'd buy a hat that had a mind of its own, but that's just me.

Eventually, Johnny finds Alice across the street from where he currently is, but she's about to get on a trolley so Johnny jumps off his owner's head and flies toward Alice. Unfortunately for Johnny, he gets hit with multiple obstacles and cannot reunite with Alice at that time. He gets trampled on, run over, bitten, and then finally is picked up by a homeless man. That doesn't last for a long time, though, because the homeless man shoots up a bar in anger and Johnny gets trampled on again. Johnny gets whisked away outside and tumbles down a hill covered in water, which makes him almost fall into a storm drain. He hangs on for dear life, because he doesn't want to give up hope that he'll find Alice again, and luckily for him; it works! He gets picked up by an iceman and is placed on a horse's head- and guess what? Alice is right next to him! What a coinkydink. So they live happily ever after. Because why not.

Disregarding the fact that this was a weird set-up, I thought it was good. The song was catchy and the moral is timeless that should ring true for practically everyone: never give up hope. If you love someone, you shouldn't let them go; you should hold on tight, because you don't know what might happen. They could get bought by someone! As a side note, I imagine this was supposed to be about slaves and then changed to hats because it could pretty much be the same exact story and the lyrics could be exactly the same if it was about slaves. And there's my terrible joke of the evening.

The Whale Who Wanted to Sing at the Met

So... uh... self-explanatory, I guess. It's about a whale, who wants to, uh, sing. At the Met.

...Yeah.

Everything's operatic, which I find annoying because I don't like opera. Everyone's in disbelief that a whale could possibly sing, to which I say: FINALLY. FINALLY people are acting like it's not normal for these things to happen. I mean, I get that it's a cartoon and animation and you can do what you want, but no one questions these things in-universe (in real life I tell people to shut it and just enjoy the animation because it's animated for a reason) and the fact that they are is a great change of pace. Anyway, there's this guy named Titti Tatti who won't accept the fact that a whale can sing and concludes that the whale obviously swallowed an opera singer. Because that's logical.

As Titti Tatti heads out to prove himself right, the whale decides to audition for the opera by singing to Titti. However, Titti doesn't really give a crap and tells his crew to shoot the whale and rescue the opera singer. However, Titti's crew doesn't really give a crap and wants to listen to the whale. It's revealed that Willy (the whale) can sing in three different voices, and sings in all of them at once, which prompts Titti to come to the conclusion that Willy swallowed three opera singers. However, eventually Willy "wows" Titti enough and pretty soon Willy's singing at the Met and is a huge hit, because this is a children's cartoon and there needs to be a happy ending with no reason for it to occur.

But wait! Whales can't go on dry land! That's a dream sequence! Which Titti puts to an end by harpooning Willy in the gut and... uh... kills... him....

...That got dark pretty fast.

Story wise? Much better than the previous two package movies, because this one has nothing to do with South American appreciation. The ones that actually have stories are captivating enough to make up for the fact that some of them are just random musical animations. I highly recommend all of the plot-driven ones besides Casey at the Bat, because I hate that story.

Song wise? Really good, actually. I was surprised. The ones in All the Cats Join In and Johnny Fedora are really great, and Without You is fun nonsensical jazz at its finest. The other ones I'm not a fan of, though they are sung really well, so there's that.

Animation wise? Even though Disney's low on staff because of World War 2, this is still some pretty quality animation. Well, actually, standard might be a better word, because it's very standard Disney for the time, which of course is quality in and of itself, so... uh... it's standard quality. Yeah, that sounds good.

Overall? 13 Martins out of 18 Coys

[terminoob]

I've been slacking a lot, because I had hoped to be at Sleeping Beauty by New Year's Eve. Time to kick it into high gear!

Originally intended to be two separate films, the budget constraints and loss of workers due to the war made Disney make a snap call and combine the two films. Was it a good idea? I dunno. Maybe. All these package films helped fund Cinderella, so I assume it was a good idea.

Bongo

Oy. Jiminy's back. I can tell this is gonna be painful. We start with Jiminy singing/bragging about how he's "fun and fancy free" and how everyone should be like him because he's the bee's knees. After a few minutes of him being self-absorbed and wanting everyone around him to indulge in "fun and fancy free", he puts on a record that's actually an audiobook about a bear named Bongo. Honestly? I didn't know they had record-audiobooks back then.

But, the story is about a circus bear named Bongo, who yearns for a life in the wild. He's treated poorly, even though he's a star, and gets fed up. Now, I feel like I've seen this before.... oh yeah, that one Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends episode. That was a good episode. De-O. Hehe. Classic. Where was I? Oh yeah, Bongo wants to leave the circus, yadda yadda yadda, he does it pretty easily, yadda yadda yadda...

He thinks the forest is fine and all, until he realizes that it's possessed by the devil. Yeah, it's creepy as hell at night. Sounds that no animal naturally makes start to occur, lightning strikes, bugs crawl all over him, he gets attacked by flies; it's terrible. But he still stays there. He figures it gets better, I suppose. He must've saw the script in advanced, because I would've bolted the first night. Fortunately for Bongo, he's about to get laid! While fishing for breakfast, he comes across a female bear, and, well... yeah. You know how this goes.

Everything's going swell because it's in song, but after the song's over... oh man, that's when things get rough. Enter Lumpjaw. The meanest, biggest, stupidest bear this side of the Bernsteins. He wants Lulubelle all to himself; he wants Bongo out of the picture ASAP. So what does he do? Fights him. Obviously. Until Lulubelle intervenes and cuts it short. Lulubelle slaps Bongo right in front of Lumpjaw, which makes Bongo really upset because who the hell slaps the bear you love? Oh, that's right. Bears do. Bongo didn't know that though, because circus bears aren't as cultured as uncultured bears, so he unicycled away and let Lulubelle and Lumpjaw live unhappily ever after... until he discovers what slapping actually means in bear society. From that point on, we get about five straight minutes of Bongo beating the crap out of Lumpjaw, and it's pretty wicked. It all ends predictably; Lumpjaw goes off a waterfall and Bongo and Lulubelle get it on in the trees. You know, typical bear-romance things.

Mickey and the Beanstalk

So, Mickey Mouse stopped being popular because he wasn't doing anything, and Donald and Goofy were so much better. Disney decided to make that end by putting Mickey on the forefront for once, instead of relegating him to small shorts like Sorcerer's Apprentice. Thus, Mickey and the Beanstalk.

The beginning of this part is freaky as hell. It's a party, represented in live-action. Except the people are puppets. PUPPETS. It freaks me out, guys. I don't like it. And it goes on for five minutes before the actual story starts.

Unfortunately, the people interrupt the story every minute. I wouldn't mind if they were funny or something, but they're just really really annoying. I don't like it. I just want the story; I don't want terrible commentary. But, the story is that a golden harp gets stolen and "Happy Valley" dries up and everyone starts dying because the golden harp had a magical voice that made everything not die and stuff. I don't really know. Also the harp is part woman. I think that might be important.

And here enters Donald, Goofy, and Mickey. Starving, they're all irritable, but none more than Donald, who says what we're all thinking 9 minutes into the movie and tells the narrator to just shut the hell up because he can't stand it. Seriously, he says that. No wonder why Donald was more popular than Mickey.

BUT HERE WE GO AGAIN and the puppets and live-action actors COME BACK. Ugh. I don't want to see you. I want to see animation. I don't like creepy puppets and annoying narrators.

Now when we get back to the story, Mickey comes back from selling his cow for "magic beans" and Donald flips shit and hangs from the rafters and throws the beans under the house. However, because they're magic, they end up growing into a large beanstalk! I dunno. I rather have food. I mean, yeah, this does resolve the plot and everything, but still. Food.

...I'm hungry.

So after some uneventful beanstalk growth, the trio end up in the giant's castle. The kitchen, to be exact, and they eat everything in sight. Yeesh. You'd think they just got home from college or something. After a small feast, they see the harp and learn of the giant! ...Which promptly cues the live-action actors to take over again in yet another scene I don't want to see.

After a pointless break in the story, we get back and see the giant dancing down the halls of his castle. It's revealed that he knows "the magic words" and is able to change his size, fly, morph himself, and disappear. I don't remember that in the folktale, but okay. Mickey gets captured relatively soon, and is able to talk himself out of it by tricking the giant into changing into a housefly. Unfortunately, the giant goes against Mickey's wishes and turns into a pink rabbit instead; awkward, because the trio got their fly swatter all set, so the giant caught onto the fact that they want to just kind of kill him.

Soon enough, the harp is able to lull the giant to sleep, and the trio sneak up and snatch the key to the chest Donald and Goofy are trapped in; but not before Mickey almost blows their cover by opening up a tin of snuff inside the giant's pocket and makes him sneeze. However, he just thinks it's a bad dream, so Mickey's able to save his friends and the harp. Mickey tries to test his luck though, and attempts to tie the giant's shoes together... which doesn't work out at all and wakes him up, causing him to rampage everywhere trying to catch him. Sucks to suck.

Eventually, we get to the beanstalk-descendant scene. We all know how it ends. Giant goes down. Beanstalk comes down. Giant goes down again.

BUT WE GET THE PEOPLE AGAIN. UGH. THEY NEED TO STOP BEING RELEVANT TO THIS STORY BECAUSE I DON'T LIKE THEM.

Story wise? They're based off stories, and that's fine. I liked them well enough. I liked Bongo better just because I hadn't heard it before, whereas I knew what was going to happen with Mickey and the Beanstalk.

Song wise? It's pretty much just "Fun and Fancy Free" over and over again. There's one song in Bongo and one in the beginning of Mickey and the Beanstalk, both of which are pretty sub-par if you ask me.

Animation wise? I enjoyed the cartoony elements of the animation. It's nice that Disney has a reputation for this fantastic animation quality, but every now and then I like seeing cartoons be cartoons. It was nice seeing Bongo as a cartoon instead of a very realistic looking bear, which is what was going to happen had it been made into a full-length movie. I dunno, I think in some cases it's better to go simple and cartoony, and this was one of them. For Bongo, anyway. Mickey and the Beanstalk was sorta eh, mostly because it was half live-action.

Overall? Two out of three bear-love-slaps. It would've been five out of seven harp strings, but the really annoying live-action people in Mickey and the Beanstalk were just terrible.

We only got two more package films to go, people! You probably aren't as excited as I am because you aren't the ones watching these.

[terminoob]

If you couldn't tell, I'm trying to get these out of the way as fast as I can.

I have absolutely no idea what any of this will be about. So let's jump in!

Once Upon a Wintertime

Because "once upon a time" and "the night before Christmas" are already trademarked. We get introduced to the story in rhyme... because that's the only way you can introduce any sort of "once upon a..." story. From what I can gather, it's about a man and a woman who fall in love during winter. They do the cliche "horse-ride through the park" and "romantic ice skating" and "getting trapped on thin ice".

...Wait.

Yeah, so I'm gonna deal with the ice skating part first. Bambi did it better; I'll just come right out and say it. I know it's due to time constraints and budget cuts and not enough workers, but after seeing Bambi and Thumper play around on the ice, and then come to... this? Well, it's disappointing, to say the least. Now, while ice skating, the girl gets mad at the guy and storms off. Unbeknownst to her, she storms off onto a sheet of thin ice. This wouldn't be a problem if there weren't two rabbits mimicking the humans, because when the girl rabbit storms off, the boy rabbit tries to warn her about the thin ice but... kind of causes it to crack. The guy races off to try and save the girl, with the rabbit right behind. He almost gets her! ...But then the line cuts off and both the girl and the girl rabbit float towards a waterfall. However, the horse-drawn carriage comes to the rescue and picks up the guy and the boy rabbit! Everything's gonna be okay! ...Until they hit a bump and the guy and the boy rabbit go flying into a pile of snow and stop moving. So, in typical Disney fashion, it's up to the animals to save the girl and the girl rabbit from certain demise! And what do ya know, they do. That wasn't very suspenseful, Disney.

Bumble Boogie

A little fly tries to escape a musical nightmare because all of the flora and fauna have turned into instruments that are trying to kill him, and it's set to an upbeat funky instrumental. I think I've said all I needed to say.

The Legend of Johnny Appleseed

I know the story. You know the story. Your mother knows the story. Everyone knows the story. It's about a guy that gets ditched by his people and decides to go out and plant apple trees everywhere. Man, that's a weird way to exact revenge.

There's not much to say about this, since I just summed up the entire 17-minute segment in the sentence above, but I'd like to rant about the animation. There's a scene here, which lasts a few minutes; it's right after Johnny befriends all the animals in the woods. He sees people gathered around the apple trees and started making civilization, because apparently in life all you need is apples (take that, The Beatles). What bugs me is the dancing sequence. Before the entire collapse of the Disney legacy that takes place a few years from when this movie was released, there were two pivotal points that started the downfall. One being when half of the staff walked out while working on Dumbo, and the other being the war.

The war caused Disney to stop production on real movies and start making package movies about propaganda and stuff. Workers got drafted, and even being short on staff Disney was expected to churn out a movie a year. That was fine and everything, but it started getting noticeable in "Fun and Fancy Free", and it's really noticeable here. The dancing sequence is the exact same as the one in The Martins and the Coys. They took stock animation and replaced the characters. It's a lazy way to cut production time because they have to do virtually no work other than make new characters. This is a huge trend throughout Disney movies (and animation in general... looking at you, Pokemon), and... well, I'll get back to it when I get to the garbage movies Disney released when everyone stopped caring. And even disregarding that the animation wasn't that well executed.

Little TooT

Oh look, back to anthropomorphic machines. First we had Pedro the plane, and now we have Toot the... uh... baby tugboat? And he's kind of an idiot. He doesn't care about anything around him and just wants to play, so he disrupts the migration patterns of boats all the time. Eventually he gets hunted by the police so he has to hide out, and ultimately decides to change his ways and wants to help his dad instead of get in his way. So what does he do? He pushes the friggin' rudder of an ocean liner until it's stuck. I don't know if you've ever played with the rudder of an ocean liner, but it's probably the stupidest thing you could ever do. Why, you ask? Well the ocean liner will go spinning out of control and crash into the city. Yeah. That's what happens. There's a crisis because the ocean liner is spinning out of control and it very quickly goes out of the water and into the city. Wanna know what happens next?

Toot gets taken in chains to the middle of the ocean and is left there. On his way, he sees his dad is now tugging garbage boats. And I don't mean bad boats, I mean boats that are filled with garbage. Know what the line of the song is? What a shame, what a shame, you disgraced your father's name.

Good Christ, Disney.

Fortunately, that's not the end of the segment (I totally thought it was). Toot gets caught in the middle of a storm and sees a ship in need of help. But because Toot is Toot, he can't do jackshit aside from send an SOS to try and get actual tugboats to help. Since it's cliche Disney, the tugboats can't make it and Toot is all by himself, and is obviously able to save the ship just in the nick of time. Since Toot helped save a ship, everyone instantly forgives him for destroying a city.

Trees

Maybe this one will be cheer- oh, never mind. It's a somber setting with a somber poem being read in the background. And it doesn't rain cats and dogs in this one; it rains xs and os. Because Disney got lazy.

Next.

Blame it on the Samba

No no no no no no no no NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. I'm not sitting through another Latin American adventure with Donald Duck. I'm not sitting through another live-action/animation combination. Disney, you suck at this. These segments aren't interesting, and resorting to lazy animation makes this less flashy than it could have been. Get over yourself, stop the war, and get to making Cinderella already.

Pecos Bill

I don't like this trend of making live-action/animation segments. I could stand it if the animation was good, or if the live-action parts weren't annoying, but neither of those are the case. This has both sub-par animation and really annoying and needless live-action. I get that it probably costs less to do that (I'm assuming; I mean it'd be half the time and half the animation and live-action can't be too expensive) and they need to save money and time and whatever, but... ugh. It's just bad. Especially when they don't have the technology to pull it off well.

So more than half part one is live-action; we don't even get to Bill (you know, the main character of this part?) until 6 or so minutes in. After tolerating some crap, we get to the part of the story that matters. One day, while Bill's family was crossing the Pecos river, they hit a bump and Bill tumbled out. His family didn't even know he was gone; at night, a coyote finds Bill and takes him in and raises him as her own son. So it's like Home Alone, but if McCauley Culkin was raised by coyotes. ...So yeah, it's like Home Alone.

Obviously, Bill develops coyote-like tendencies, which include scratching himself with his leg and eating bones. But Bill wasn't satisfied with becoming top coyote; no, he wanted to be top everything. What does he do? He beats all the animals at what their best at. One day while he was out being the best there ever was (sorry Ash), he stumbled upon a swarm of vultures trying to eat a horse. Being the badass that he is, Bill (he's still like 2 years old) decides to save the horse by braving the vultures himself. And from that day on, he decides to be a cowboy. Because epiphanies.

Fastfoward to when Bill's an adult, and what's the first thing he does when he's a cowboy? He shoots his hat and creates a cyclone, which he then ropes and straddles; in the middle of this, he rolls a cigarette and lights it with a lightning bolt. Talk about badass. And these kids today think they're cool when they can do an ollie on a skateboard with a girl watching. What else did he do? Rope a raincloud from California to bring to Texas, knocked out the gold fillings of every guy that tried to steal his cattle, created the Painted Desert and shot the stars. But, one day while headbutting a buffalo, it happened. A girl. Slue-Foot Sue. Now I don't know about you, but I would never go for a girl with "Sule" or "Foot" in her name; that may be shallow of me, but I'm just saying.

But you know. He's Bill and a badass so he makes the moon come up "just right" and he totally gets some tail on their firs date. Aw yeah. But then she wants to get married. Aw no. Unfortunately, Bill's horse didn't like that idea; so he bucked and bucked and bucked and bucked and caused Sue to fly off and into the sky. Now one would think she'd die on impact; but no, her dress kept her bouncing. However, it also made her gain altitude with each bounce, which would cause her to go up into the moon if no one stopped her. And of course Bill comes to the rescue. He throws up a rope and is sure to catch Sue! ...Except his horse is a dick and stopped the rope short, so it missed. Eventually, no one cared about Sue and she bounced into the moon. Bill got upset like a baby and ran away and reverted back to his coyote-state and started howling or some crap.

Story wise? Everything's passable except Blame it on the Samba. That was terrible.

Song wise? Yeah sure, why not. Pretty good I guess.

Animation wise? I already ranted about the animation in Johnny Appleseed. The animation in Pecos Bill wasn't any better, and Blame it on the Samba spent too much time caring about the live-action quality. Everything else was... okay, I guess. The humans were too cartoony for my liking (I only like cartoony style from Disney on occasion; this movie was not that occasion).

Overall? One Sule out of four Foots.

[Dragonball Z]

I thought your "Make Mine Music" review was pretty good. I've seen the movie myself on VHS (which didn't HAVE the "Martin and Coys" segment because it was deemed TOO dark for domestic release). When are you going to get to the next movie, "The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad?" I want to know what you think of that movie; I personally liked it. Enough said!