Donald lets the firehouse go up in smoke.
Not the most original gag to build a short on, but it
works. Mostly because Donald has his
nephews to play off of as he tells them to step aside he’ll handle it and then
makes the situation worse by starting the fire in the first place and then
pumping gasoline on it among other things.
I love that the nephews have their usual troublemaker personalities on
display too with pranking Donald by setting off the alarm in the opening of the
short.
Watching this short and comparing it to some of the others I’ve
already looked it the changing of the Disney animation style over time is
really striking. While the rubber hose
animation style of the twenties and much of the thirties is gone, replaced by
the more restrained use of squash and stretch instead, its influence it still
present here. From the way the fire
truck’s ladder swings wide as the truck turns, to how full Donald's body
becomes when he breathes in to blows into his horn.
Also things in the background like the telephone poles as the fire
truck is moving, no proper perspective going on there. Seeing that change over time is a reminder of
just how much Disney was pushing the envelope for how animation was done back
then. And the growth and improvement of
the animators is something I love watching for as I look back on the classic
Disney cartoons.
As to the short itself I like it. There are some fun gags, the animation looks really good despite not being as subtle as later works and Donald and his nephews trying to act together and failing is nice to see since a lot of the other shorts have them at odds more often than not.
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