Pages

Friday, February 14, 2014

Short Subject: Crazy Over Daisy (1950)



In honour of Valentine’s Day I’m taking a quick look at this Donald Duck short.  That despite its title doesn’t actually have a lot of love in it.

First off I think the look of the short is nice with its bright colours and the 1890s design style, once you get past the fact that Donald with hair makes him look like the 50s Scrooge McDuck.  The animation is great, at this point in the studio’s history Disney really have character animation down, with Donald’s walk cycle at the end and a nice use of angles when Donald is being chased by the cannon ball, and when Chip and Dale are throwing apples at him.

Speaking of Chip and Dale boy they really are jerks in this short.  Normally Donald does something to the chipmunks to earn their wrath and deserves his comeuppance.  Here all he did was look dorky while riding a bicycle.  So their antagonizing of him seems really mean spirited and I honestly wish the film had just ended with Donald riding off to Daisy’s after getting the upper hand on the chipmunks.  Here they did something wrong first so I think them getting their comeuppance is warranted.  

So the plot of the short if you want to call it that is a bit iffy, but as I said the look and animation is great and I love the music too.  The lyrics are fun and I love how the music weaves through the short and charges, like how the melody speeds up when Donald is being chased into the water fountain.  Also the little bit of voice work in here is good too. 

All in all it is a really good short subject I just wish it had ended with Donald riding his Chip and Dale powered bicycle to Daisy’s instead of having Daisy berating him and taking Chip and Dale inside, thus leaving Donald with nothing since I honestly don’t think he did anything wrong.

No comments:

Post a Comment