Fun and Fancy Free 1947
Now that Disney Plus is out, I can go back and watch all of Disney’s canon of animated features without having to buy them. Of 56 movies, I have reviews for all but 10 now. Unfortunately those 10 are clustered at the bottom of my ranked list, including this one, 1947’s Fun and Fancy Free, another in that era where Disney just took two short movies and combined them into one movie. The first part is Bongo about a circus bear who longs for something more and escapes into the woods. The entire movie is narrated by Dinah Shore, who was a big name at the time, but having someone narrate a story doesn’t work as well as when the characters can tell their own story. Ultimately the movie is cute, with some nice songs, but is kind of boring. The second half of the movie is Mickey and the Beanstalk with Mickey, Donald, and Goofy. This is better, but again gets handicapped by narration, this time live action cutaways to Edgar Bergen interacting with his ventriloquist dummies and a little girl while he tells the story. I read up on Edgar Bergen and found out he and his dummy were pretty popular as a radio show where you couldn’t even see the ventriloquist and dummy interacting. Bergen’s pieces aren’t terrible, they just take away from the main story and kind of add filler to a story that is already familiar and straightforward. That said, the beanstalk story is pretty good. I agree that Fun and Fancy Free has to stay close to the bottom, more of a cartoon for kids than a story that can be enjoyed by a wider audience. It is harmless and easy to watch for the most part, but not that rewarding.
Written: 16 May 2020