Hey guys! Welcome back to another Disney review. Today I'm kicking off the Christmas movie review season with one of my favourite Christmas specials, Mickey's Christmas Carol, produced by Walt Disney Pictures in 1983. So let's get into it.
Back in the '90s, I grew up on a steady diet of Disney movies and cartoons. There weren't a whole lot of older Mickey Mouse cartoons on TV at the time, but every year, on Christmas Eve, CBC aired Mickey's Christmas Carol, along with an airing of Winnie the Pooh and Christmas Too. And every year for as long as I can remember, my mom, my dad, my sister, my brother and I would sit in front of the TV, before bed and watch these two specials. Without fail. There was never a year when we didn't watch them. Sure, there were years where other Christmas specials were on as well, but Disney was appointment Television in my house when I was growing up. So whenever something Disney was on, we watched it.
For those of you who might not know what this Christmas special is about, it's Disney's adaptation of "A Christmas Carol" by Charles Dickens, starring Scrooge McDuck as Ebenezer Scrooge, Mickey Mouse as Bob Cratchit, and other Disney characters as the other characters in the story. There also isn't any deviation in the story either. It's literally just the Disney version of "A Christmas Carol". Which is kind of interesting considering what Disney has been known for for 99 years (including the Laugh-O-Gram period).
When I was a kid, the Ghost of Christmas Future scene was the one that scared me as a kid. I mean, he was played by Pete, was hooded and there was a fiery pit with Scrooge about to fall in with the ghost laughing at him and taunting him. That would be enough to scare any kid. Especially compared to the Ghost of Jacob Marley (played by Goofy), the Ghost of Christmas Past (played by Jiminy Cricket), and the Ghost of Christmas Present (played by Willie the Giant) who weren't scary at all. Aside from The Muppet Christmas Carol, and hearing Sir Patrick Stewart's dramatic reading of the Charles Dickens version on the radio when I was a kid, this is the only version of the story that I've ever experienced.
The animation is your standard, early '80s Disney animation, though some of your usual Disney animators from the Disney Renaissance of the '90s, Glen Keane, Mark Henn and Randy Cartwright, worked on this short. I watched it on Disney+ and it looks amazing on the platform. Prior to this, I've only seen it on TV in the '90s and early 2000s, so I've never seen it on a good, quality, format like DVD or even Blu-ray. But it was good on Disney+. At some point I would like to try and get one of the VHS releases of the movie, either the Walt Disney Mini-Classics release or the Disney Favorite Stories Collection release for that nostalgic feel of watching it on an older format.
One of the most interesting things about this cartoon featurette is that it was Mickey's first appearance in a theatrical cartoon since 1953. His regular theatrical cartoon series ended in 1953 when it became more expensive to put out theatrical cartoons on a regular basis than it was to make full length animated feature films. In fact, the '50s saw a massive decline in Disney's output of theatrical short cartoons, leading to the occasional thirty minute theatrical cartoon featurette such as Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree rather than the seven or eight minute cartoon shorts like the earlier Mickey Mouse cartoons.
Overall this is a pretty solid Christmas special. Like I said, I watched it every year with Winnie the Pooh and Christmas Too on CBC every Christmas Eve when I was a kid. It usually aired before that, but we tended to wait until the Christmas Eve airing to watch it just to give us something to do to settle us down before bed. And the best part is is that it still holds up really well today. Nothing about it feels outdated or anything like that. Which is nice.
That's gonna be it for me for today. I'll be back on Wednesday with the next Christmas movie review where I will be reviewing Frosty the Snowman. So until then have a great evening and I will see you all next time. Later!
Links
Disney Wiki: https://disney.fandom.com/wiki/Mickey%27s_Christmas_Carol
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