Get A Horse! (2013); animated short film review

Poster artwork for the animated short film Get A Horse!

Mixed-Media Mickey by Linh

Walt Disney Studios continues with their tradition of preceding animated feature films with an original animated short film. Get A Horse! screens ahead of the animated musical film Frozen, and it is a mixed-media treat for the 21^st century generation of children and for adults who recall seeing the original cartoons in the 1930s to 1950s.

Get A Horse! is a 6-minute film that pays cinematic homage to the original Mickey Mouse films of the period from 1928 to 1935, when 7 or 8 minute black and white short films that were called cartoons at the time, featured Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse and Peg-leg Pete. Additional characters such as Clarabelle Cow and Horace Horsecollar were added to the cast of characters in 1929. Later in 1935, the Mickey Mouse cartoons were produced in technicolour and screened regularly in theatres until 1953. Walt Disney Studios produced one-off shorts in colour between 1983 and 2013.

GENTLEMANLY GESTURE: Mickey Mouse invites his girlfriend Minnie Mouse to join him on a haywagon ride in the animated short film Get A Horse! Image: Walt Disney Animated Studios.

In Get A Horse!, Mickey hitches a haywagon ride from his friend Horace Horsecollar and they pick up Minnie Mouse and Clarabelle Cow along the way. Soon after, Peg-leg Pete appears close behind the haywagon driving his old car and toots his car horn that bellows,“ Make way for the future!” Pete begins to ogle Minnie but Mickey uses Clarabelle to block Pete’s view of Minnie. Pete becomes annoyed at Mickey, so he rams his car into the back of the haywagon, tossing Mickey and Horace towards the cinema screen. Pete then tosses Mickey and Horace harder, so the pair break through the screen and land in the coloured real world. Pete seals up the hole in the screen and continues taunting Mickey and Horace while he has Minnie in his grasp.

The rest of the short film is a brilliant blend of slapstick comedy, transitioning from black and white to colour cinema, and using modern day colour film technology to reach into the black and white past of film-making. For example, after they are tossed into the real world, Mickey uses Horace’s smartphone to assist in pulling a funny prank on Pete. Archive audio featuring the original voices of the actors, are also used in the film alongside the voices of the modern day actors. This short film requires viewers to suspend their disbelief in order to believe the impossible and enjoy the pairing of black and white with colour, and old film-making techniques with new cinema technology.

HAYWAGON HUMOUR: Peg-leg Pete is angry at Mickey Mouse for disrupting his sexual gaze of Minnie Mouse in the animated short film Get A Horse! Image: Walt Disney Animation Studios.

The short film features a small cameo from Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, who looks like Mickey Mouse with rabbit ears, a character Disney co-created. Oswald featured in Disney cartoons from the 1920s to 1930s. Disney lost the rights to Oswald after “refusing to take a twenty percent pay cut from film producer Charles Mintz” (Tallarico 2014). Disney also lost most of his animation staff to Mintz. In 2006, the Walt Disney company secured the intellectual property rights of Oswald, and the rabbit with personality and humour began appearing in Disney’s video games from 2012 onwards.

Get A Horse! is directed by Lauren MacMullan (Wreck-It Ralph, The Simpsons Movie), who is the first woman to solely direct a film from Walt Disney Animation Studios. This is a triumph of sorts as Walt Disney was a misogynist, according to those who worked closely with him. While presenting an award to Emma Thompson at the National Board of Review awards ceremony on 7 January 2014, Meryl Streep called Disney a gender bigot and racist, then “quoted Disney animator Ward Kimball who said: ‘He didn’t trust women or cats’. Streep then read a letter Disney wrote, and quoted his words spoken to a female job applicant: ‘Women do not do any of the creative work in connection with preparing cartoons for the screen, as that task is performed entirely by young men. For this reason, girls are not considered for the training school’ " (Appelo 2014).  Disney may not have had much confidence in women’s creative talents but he trusted their opinions. In 1959, he wrote: “Women are the best judges of anything we turn out. Their taste is very important. They are the theatre-goers, they are the ones who drag the men in. If the women like it, to heck with the men” (Appelo 2014). 

Get A Horse! is a charming and enjoyable short film that introduces some of Disney’s earliest animated characters and some lesser-known ones. The animated violence in this film is humourous for adults but may unsettle younger children.

PLAYFUL PRANK: In the real world, Mickey Mouse and Horace Horsecollar play a phone prank on Peg-leg Pete who has captured Minnie Mouse in the cartoon world in the animated short film Get A Horse! Image: Walt Disney Animation Studios.

Director: Lauren MacMullan

Writers: Lauren MacMullan (story), Nancy Kruse (story), Raymond S. Persi, Paul Briggs (story)

Voice Cast: Walt Disney (archive sound), Russi Taylor, Will Ryan, Marcellite Garner (archive sound), Billy Bletcher (archive sound), Bob Bergen, Terri Douglas, Mona Marshall,  Jess Harnell, Paul Briggs

Producers: John Lasseter, Dorothy McKim, Michele Mazzano

Original Music Composer: Mark Watters

Film Editor: Julie Rogers

Running Time: 6 minutes

References:

Appelo, Tim (2014). Was Meryl Streep Correct in Calling Walt Disney a “Bigot”? The Hollywood Reporter. 9 January 2014.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/was-meryl-streep-correct-calling-669589 

Accessed on 29 January 2014.

Tallarico, Tony J. (2014). Oswald the Lucky Rabbit: Mickey’s Predecessor. This Day in Disney History.

http://thisdayindisneyhistory.homestead.com/OswaldRabbit.html

Accessed on 29 January 2014.