Disney Sundays: Fun and Fancy Free (1947)

                If a series of musical segments didn’t work for Disney, how about just a pair of straight up stories? That may have been the thinking behind Fun and Fancy Free which is composed of two shorts and some very strange interludes. But does this work and make it better than Make Mine Music? Well, yes and no…

                Fun and Fancy Free really feels like a package film, in that it’s clearly thrown together somewhat haphazardly on a budget. It’s short at just over an hour, basic, and incorporates more live-action than you’d expect in a Disney feature. And partly because of this, the film’s not very memorable, and while there are definitely good things about it, it’s very clear why.

                Introduced by Jiminy Cricket in an unspecified house (though Cleo from Pinocchio is there), we get first a story told (and sung) by Dinah Shore on a record, to make a doll and a teddy bear happy. It’s called “Bongo” and follows a bear who does unicycle tricks in a circus. But he escapes one night out of a longing for home in the forest. However he has trouble adapting and experiences a number of fish out of water situations. Eventually he catches the eye of a female bear Lulubelle whom he tries to win over the brutish bully Lumpjaw.

                This story is mostly formulaic and maudlin, but it’s cute. None of the characters (only three are named) have much dimension. However it’s about as harmless as Dumbo, with which it has a lot in common. Both feature a young animal performing in a circus, and exploited by their masters. There’s not much creativity in the plot, apart from the fact that bear slaps apparently indicate affection. That’s new and in terms of comedic animation, it’s fairly interesting. In fact the animation may be its best asset as the short allows for a degree of slapstick, which is pretty good. The fact that Bongo rides a unicycle and the very loose laws of physics to the bears’ design makes the physical humour easy. Shore’s narration and singing is decent. She doesn’t get too caught up in it which is nice, but I’d be lying if I didn’t detect just a bit of boredom on her part. “Bongo” is nice to look at and it’s harmless, but you don’t get a whole lot out of it. It’s just a fish out of water romance story with a unicycle riding bear. You know, that old trope. Maybe if the scale of it was expanded, if the narration was lost and the characters spoke, it could be one of the great Disney shorts. As is, it’s better than most of the stuff in Make Mine Music, but its only okay.

                For the transition, Jiminy leaves his house and goes out into the real world, where he listens in on a story ventriloquist Edgar Bergen (you may have heard of his daughter Candice) is telling a little girl and a few of his dummies. It’s the Jack and the Beanstalk story but with a few alterations. A place called Happy Valley has suffered from a terrible drought ever since the singing golden harp was stolen. Three farmers, Mickey, Donald, and Goofy struggle to get by, resting their hopes on selling their cow to get money for food. Mickey sells the cow for, you guessed it, magic beans. Furious, Donald throws the beans under the floorboards of their house and overnight a giant beanstalk grows beneath them, taking the trio all the way up to a castle high above the clouds. As they explore this gigantic world, they find the harp and plan on rescuing her from Willie the dimwitted giant.

                This story is a little more entertaining. Teaming up Disney’s three most famous characters to enact a fairy tale was a smart move as you already know their personalities from the start and the way they interact in this setting and story promises to be really funny and a lot of fun. I actually recall watching this short on its own (possibly alongside “Peter and the Wolf”) and enjoyed the characters and the comedy. Hell, it might have been my introduction to Goofy. Mickey Mouse and co. don’t often appear in the feature films, but when they do, they’re welcome. Once again, there’s some very good slapstick and physical comedy. The three of them evade attacking dragonflies in their little leaf boat all in their own unique way. Goofy bounces around on a jelly in an attempt to recover his hat. Mickey tries to steal the key to a box from Willie’s pocket, Mission Impossible style, and it makes for some good scenes. The narration also is much less of a presence as the characters and physical comedy can keep the story afloat. It looks great too, the animators play a little with the enormous scope of the world our characters have entered. And it’s creative. Probably my favourite bit is just the beanstalk growing and we see Mickey, Donald, and Goofy sleeping through it all at their peril, as their house falls apart and less and less supports them, only for something to always save them from falling. There aren’t a lot of Jack and the Beanstalk adaptations (for good reason if you’ve seen Jack the Giant Slayer), which very easily makes this the funniest version of the story and most enjoyable to watch. My only gripe is that it doesn’t really have an end. It follows the same beats as the story but in the climax it just stops. Usually we see a little bit of the resolution in the Jack and the Beanstalk story, but we don’t get that here. Instead the film feels obliged to give a little more time to Bergen and his puppets.

                And there is probably the strangest problem with this film on a whole. Both stories are decent, but the wraparounds suck! Jiminy Cricket is mostly annoying here as he sings a song about not worrying about the future and only living in the now, which feels disturbingly like an encouragement of ignorance. For the first part, he’s also more or less by himself just addressing the audience and it’s not exciting. Both Dinah Shore’s and Edgar Bergan’s roles feel like advertisements. Especially the latter. The whole Edgar Bergen bit is awkward and creepy. If you think Jeff Dunham’s ventriloquism is annoying, this is …about as bad. Both puppets, the wisecracking Charlie McCarthy and the hillbilly Mortimer are creepy. The idea any little girl would want to be surrounded by them is unbelievable. The live-action seems out of place, goes on too long, and though the Beanstalk story is the better story, you have to deal with interruptions from this world. Bergen himself is fine as a narrator but every so often Charlie will cut in with a comment as if it’s Mystery Science Theatre. It’s even worse when it cuts back to their scene away from Mickey and co. and their adventure. Sometimes it works; deconstructing and making fun of some of the plot holes in the story can be funny, but it also becomes annoying. There’s a really cheesy device leading into the start of the story and an even cheesier outro when it’s done. These transitions are so awkward, dumb, out of place, and weird that it really holds the film back.

                So yeah, Fun and Fancy Free is really really ….okay. It’s certainly not good, but not terrible either. As I said both the shorts are fine. “Mickey and the Beanstalk” I’d even say is good and is the memorable one of the two. But it’s really held back by the weakness of the film’s framing device. Both stories work just as well if not better as shorts on their own so there really isn’t a point for this film. In that, it seems Fun and Fancy Free was made out of obligation, without passion, creativity, or a substantial amount of effort. It’s not the worst, but could have delivered a lot more than it did on its title.

Next Week: Melody Time (1948)