Disney Classics In Order - No. 9 Fun And Fancy Free

Well, having made a call to stick with it at the end of the last of these, I promptly didn't because I wasn’t looking forward to this run of post-ar money-saving exercises. I have, however, committed to watching them in order and I am nothing if not mildly obsessive so here we go with a run that I am affectionately thinking of as “a right old slog”.

Fun And Fancy Free (1947)
Directors:- Jack Kinney; Bill Roberts; Hamilton Luske; William Morgan
Based Upon:-  Little Bear Bongo by Sinclair Lewis and Jack And The Beanstalk

The One Where
Still in the post-war doldrums, we get two slightly longer tales this time rather than a grab bag of different shorts - Bongo, the tale of a circus bear who escapes to the wild and Mickey And The Beanstalk, which does exactly what it says on the tin.

General Viewing Notes
- A rare reappearance for a previous film character as Jiminy Cricket poops up to introduce both tales (alongside what appears to be the fish from Pinocchio in the opening segment - why not reuse the character designs?)
- Bongo comes close to having some moments of lunacy that seem to get close to Warner Brothers style lunacy before being undercut by a standard level of Disney cuteness.
- Mickey And The Beanstalk is framed by a live-action piece with American ventriloquist Edgar Bergen (along with his puppets Charlie McCarthy and Mortimer Snerd). I say “ventriloquist” - Bergen started out in vaudeville and on the radio (yes, a radio ventriloquist - we had our own over here, Archie Andrews) where obviously no one could see your mouth. His ventriloquism is awful, truly dreadful. He may have got away with it in the ‘40s but it doesn’t hold up now.
- There's a unnecessarily long discussion during one of the live-action links about killing Mickey's cow. It feels weirdly gruesome for a Disney film.

Disney Tropes
- Terror Forest - this one seems to crop up in a few (and def should have been called out as a trope in Snow White and Bambi):- a trip through a forest is filled with looming terrors, usually at night.

It’s That Voice Again
Cliff Edwards, as mentioned, back as Jiminy Cricket.

Things You Notice As An Adult
-  The bears courtship ritual of showing affection by slapping each other round the face is probably not something that Disney would be comfortable with nowadays; shades of trivialising domestic violence.

Classic Songs - Are They?
No, not really - they're thin on the ground in this one and those that are there are pretty instantly forgettable.

Any Good Then?
Not really sadly - there are some moments of enjoyment to be had in Bongo but Edgar Bergen’s tedious schtick in Mickey And The Beanstalk along with the overall blandess of the whole thing means that it’s a fight to get through to the end (and it’s only 73 minutes long).

Next One Of These
Oh, what’s that? Another anthology film, you say? Whoopee...