Tropes Media Browse Indexes Forums Videos Ask The Tropers Trope Finder Media Finder Trope Launch Pad Tech Wishlist Reviews Tools
Cut List New Edits Edit Reasons Launches Images List Crowner Activity Un-typed Pages Recent Page Type Changes Changelog
Tips
Creating New Redirects Cross Wicking Tips for Editing Text Formatting Rules Glossary Edit Reasons Handling Spoilers Word Cruft Administrivia FAQ
Tropes HQ
About Us Contact Us Advertise DMCA Notice Privacy Policy Report Bug
Go Ad-Free Changelog
  • Show Spoilers
  • Night Vision
  • Sticky Header
  • Highlight Links
 

Follow TV Tropes

Following

Blog / Unshaved Mouse

Go To

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/comm_unshavedmouse_alt.png
Unshaved Mouse after watching too many cartoons.

"Have You been to Bahia, my friend?"
— The Tumblr page's Subtitle

Who is Neil Sharpson? Oh, no one important. Just your average Happily Married Irish cartoon enthusiast-slash-comic book geek-slash-playwright... transformed into a mouse by the immortal spirit of Walt Disney as punishment for not liking Beauty and the Beast, and tasked to review every single film in the Disney Animated Canon. Along for the ride: several very opinionated maps of various continents, Nit the Nit-Picking Nit, Walt Disney himself (who flip-flops between Trickster Mentor and plain ol' Jerkass at the drop of a hat), and a gaggle of vile villains led by the Horned King.

Perhaps it would be prudent now to mention that this blog's very first entry on TV Tropes was under Continuity Lockout, heh?

By Sharpson's own admission, The Unshaved Mouse began in 2012 as a project to determine which Disney movie would be the best to introduce his daughter to. But over the years, it ballooned into one of the hardiest review blogs on the Internet, featuring a surprisingly expansive supporting cast and a fairly elaborate Meta Plot. But between the hundred and one in-jokes, Sharpson's love for the Disney canon - indeed, (almost) all animation —is practically tangible, and his reviews are as informative as they are entertaining. At the end of each review comes a 20/20/20/20/20 scale where he objectively (in his opinion) scores the quality of each film, based on Animation, Hero, Villain, Supporting Cast, and Music. And while he makes his personal view on each movie very clear, the scale is objective enough to give some pretty high rankings to films that he personally dislikes.

In late 2014, having caught up with the Canon's then-latest offering (Frozen) he promptly turned his attention to Disney's other box-office powerhouse: the Marvel Cinematic Universe.note  These are scored on a slightly different 25/25/25/25 scale, covering Hero, Villain, Supporting Cast, and Adaptationnote .

The end? Don't you believe it. As of this writing, more than half the reviews on Sharpson's site consist of non-Disney fare. Being a gentlemouse of diverse tastes (and a fondness for fundraisers), Sharpson takes reader requests on a semi-regular basis, usually in exchange for donations to some humanitarian cause.note  The resulting reviews have gone as high as Princess Mononoke and as low as The Toxic Avenger - with the odd side-project such as:

    open/close all folders 

    Shortstember (2016) 
Kicked off in August, partly as Shameless Self-Promotion for the much-coveted Littlewoods Ireland Blog Award. Covers a single "iconic" short for each decade from the 1910s to the 2010s.

    Mouse Goes To War! 
Kicked off in summer of 2017, covering various World War II cartoons from both the United States and the Axis Powers.

    Bats Versus Bolts 
Kicked off at the start of 2019, combing the best-known Dracula and Frankenstein adaptations of each generation and pitting them against each other.

    Shortstember (2021) 
Kicked off in September, covering viewer-requested episodes of some of Disney's best-remembered animated TV shows of the early '90s.

Peruse his many adventures at yonder link.

The blog's reviews and metaplot exhibit the following tropes:

  • 2D Visuals, 3D Effects: Usually mocked with an image of the PlayStation's logo.
  • Abel And Cain: The Unscrupulous Mouse, a parody of Sharpson's real-life older brother.note 
  • Aborted Arc: Mouse's Ant-Man and the Wasp review kicked off an effort to try and find one disguised Skrull in each MCU movie. He gave up after the next movie, Captain Marvel (2019), revealed that Marvel Studios took some unexpected liberties with their depiction of the Skrulls, though they would later portray them as more sinister in SecretInvasion.
  • Africa Is a Country: The famous background mouse in The Rescuers representing Africa at the Rescue Society gets a mention, and a Face Palm from Mouse. But then he chooses to interpret this mouse as a character with spin-off potential, complete with photoshopping her head onto Coffy.
    "You know what? I want to see her movie. I want to see the movie made about the little mouse with the afro looking after an entire damn continent."
  • All Issues Are Political Issues: This was Comrade Crow's whole bag in the Cinderella review. Sharpson found this style of humor too difficult to write and later turned Crow into a standard Dirty Communist.
  • All Men Are Perverts: Mouse has gone for a few jokes in this vein, though not many.
  • Alternate Aesop Interpretationinvoked: Sharpson notes in Hercules that Hades keeps his bargains (Herc gets his powers back if Meg is harmed), but our hero does not ("She goes, you stay"), instead simply walking away as soon as Hades can't stop him.
    Mouse: What the hell Disney? Is the moral that you don’t have to honour your promises once you’re in a position of power? That might makes right? That the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must?
    Walt Disney: Finally, you understand.
  • Alternative Character Interpretationinvoked: Does these a lot.
    • Disney himself was a Mad Artist who trafficked heavily in the occult, obtaining immortality in the process. Not Heat Vision though, that's apparently just something that animators can do.
    • Mulan is a walking avatar of Death itself.
    • The rat from Lady and the Tramp was named Larry, and was just checking on the baby out of concern for its well being. He survived his run-in with Tramp, received botched reconstructive surgery, went mad, and renamed himself Ratigan.
    • The Blue Fairy from Pinocchio had an affair with a human, resulting in the birth of Cinderella. Now older, she claimed to be Cinderella's Fairy Godmother so she could help her without revealing their connection.
    • The "Princess of Glowerhaven" that Prince Eric failed to hit it off with was the Queen from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. This incident resulted in her becoming self-conscious about her appearance, and led to her transforming a prince into a beast.
    • The actual Brazilian state of Bahia is in reality a realm of madness and chaos, in which the devil himself (a Crimson Cockerel named Panchito Pistoles) can be encountered. And Jose Carioca is a warlock in his service.
    • Hera is the true evil mastermind in Hercules, in keeping with her mythological counterpart.
    • After marrying into royalty, Cinderella sicced the kingdom's guards on Lady Tremaine for domestic slavery and possibly the murder of Cinderella's father, causing her to go on the run. She fled to France (leaving her daughters as patsies) and lived off her fortune, becoming Lady Adelaide before being identified and apprehended by Lieutenant Columbo.
    • As of Ant-Man and the Wasp, Scott Lang is part of an... "open marriage" between his ex-wife and her current husband.
    • He claims that Pepper Potts was somehow possessed by the spirit of Terrence Howard out of revenge, after his role as Rhody was taken over by Don Cheadle in Iron Man 2, explaining why Pepper is more hostile to Tony than she was in the original film.
  • Alternate Company Equivalent: Discussed by Mouse in his review of Black Panther (2018), with him calling the Panther one of three Marvel heroes (along with Daredevil and Moon Knight) who refine the premise of Batman.
  • Animation Age Ghettoinvoked: Mouse has discussed this a few times, most prominently in the Princess Mononoke review.
  • Arc Villain: Well, as much as the idea of a Story Arc can be applied to a review blog. The Horned King was arguably the first, though.
  • Arch-Enemy:
    • Mouse personally views the Horned King as this, as revealed in the Frozen review.
    • Don Bluth considers Mouse to be his arch-enemy, for reasons revealed in the Troll in Central Park review.
  • The Aristocrats: Mouse makes the obvious joke to start his review of The Aristocats. Instead of the usual assortment of depravity, though, the description of the act, as elaborated upon in the review proper, simply lists his reasons for disliking the movie itself.
  • Artistic License – Biology: In his review of The Lion King (1994) he implies African wild dogs to be in the same genus as hyenas. In fact, not only are hyenas in a different family from canids, but hyenas are actually closer to cats than dogs.
  • A Taste of the Lash: An early recurring character was a nun who would whip readers for paying too much attention to what Mouse considered to be boring movies.
    Fool! That means you were paying attention! And the penalty is torture!
  • Author Appeal: Mouse is a massive geek about cartoons and comic books, and regularly lampshades his own tendency to cram in Batman jokes everywhere he gets the chance.
    • He's also a fan of Columbo, and though the good lieutenant has only appeared in two reviews, he's one of the blog's most fondly-remembered in-jokes.
    • Parodied with Cleo the goldfish from Pinocchio; Mouse's supposed attraction to cartoon fish is a running joke on the blog.
  • Author Tract: Quite a few of his reviews contain mini-essays on topics like race, feminism, and history, which may only be tangentially related to the movie at hand. Lampshaded in his review of The Little Mermaid:
    Sarcastic Map of Wartime Europe: He's going to start reviewing the movie any minute now, folks.
  • Back from the Dead: Walt reveals in the Bedknobs and Broomsticks review that the Treguna Mekoides spell, used by Eglantine Price to bring inanimate objects to life, doubles as a resurrection chant. Mouse's cast uses it to resurrect Sarcastic Map of Wartime Europe, last seen in the Fun and Fancy Free review.
  • Bat Deduction:
  • Bears Are Bad News: He has this to say about Kenai slamming the bear totem in Brother Bear:
    "[Bears] are the largest carnivores walking the earth. They are incredibly intelligent. They can run at over 30 miles per hour. They can smell blood at distances in excess of forty miles. They can climb, swim and smash their way through almost anything to get to you. We can extrapolate that the odds are good that at any given time somewhere there is a bear that could kill you and simply chooses not to. Which is why, everyday, I take a few minutes to get on my knees and thank my bear."
  • Beethoven Was an Alien Spy: Walt Disney was (and is) a warlock who sold his soul for immortality, was the Unshaved Mouse of his generation ("like the Slayer") tasked with holding back a great evil (the Horned King), deliberately put images of mice with mustaches in some of his movies to plant post-hypnotic suggestions in the mind of the current Mouse, and is responsible for said Mouse being a mouse as punishment for not liking Beauty and the Beast enough. Also, he has heat vision and is obsessed with magic brooms.
  • Berserk Button:
    • Mouse might seem laid-back and meek most of the time, but mention John Tenniel (original illustrator for Lewis Carroll's Alice books and creator of some of the worst anti-Irish caricatures in history) and watch him explode.
    • One not played for laughs beyond the vaguest sense - he hated Saving Mr. Banks for exemplifying the absolute worst of the biopic genre (a genre he already distrusted), rewriting and outright retconning huge chunks of Pamela Travers' life and personality in the name of making brand-friendly Oscar Bait.
  • Big "NO!": Mouse will belt out one of these once in a while.
  • Bizarro World: The Don Bluth-verse introduced in the review of An American Tail. It's apparently an alternate timeline where Disney Animation gave up after The Secret of NIMH trounced them at the box office, instead of striking back with the Disney Renaissance. Bluth then went on to dominate the animation industry, and the world itself. This somehow causes Al Gore to be elected president in 2000.
  • Borrowed Catchphrase:
    • "Oh my God, [X] you whores!", which Mouse exclaims whenever a movie reminds him of another work, was also used by The Horned King in his part of the review of The Great Mouse Detective. note 
      "By Lucifer’s balls! Disney, you harlot!"
    • When Mouse reviewed Vin Diesel's The Iron Giant and Guardians of the Galaxy (2014), in two separate articles, he switched around the last words of Diesel's characters, making the Giant say, "We are Groot", and Groot say, "Superman".
  • Breakout Character: Sarcastic Map of Wartime Europe. While the Angry Mob technically predates him/her/it as supporting character and running gag, SMOWE was the first to appear in jokes and exchanges outside its original context, and kicked off the Running Gag of maps of other continents as supporting characters.
  • Brick Joke: In his review of The Jungle Book (1967), Mouse says that anyone who doesn't like Baloo is probably a Nazi. Several reviews later, in Bedknobs and Broomsticks, an actual Nazi suddenly realizes that he hates Baloo.
  • Broke the Rating Scale:
    • Any movie that Mouse's younger self reviews receives a score much higher than 100%.
    • Mulan threatens to kill Mouse for giving her a 19/20, so the frightened Mouse raises it to a perfect 20, then asks if he can possibly even give her 21. Judging by the movie's overall grade, he unfortunately can't.
    • Mouse's review of Saving Mr. Banks ends with him expressing a Refusal to Rate the "piece of corporate propaganda".
    • Mouse's review of the Haruhi Suzumiya anime's "Endless Eight" story arc does contain a score, but he doesn't bother breaking it down into the five usual categories, since he found the mere concept — an eight-part "Groundhog Day" Loop in which parts 2-7 use almost the exact same script — rather pointless.
    • Mouse also didn't give the Nazi propaganda short Das dumme Ganslein a scorecard, explaining in the comments that it "didn't feel appropriate."
  • Broken Aesop: Mouse has called out quite a few of these in reviews, most notably in The Sword in the Stone — Merlin warns Wart not to believe that magic can solve all his problems, even though he uses magic to solve his own problems.
  • Broken Pedestal: For all their differences over the years, Mouse looked up to Walt Disney (the blog character) as an inspiration and mentor... then he learns that Walt deliberately cursed him and snuck him into Don Bluth's studio as a way of sabotaging the competition...
  • Bullying a Dragon: Sarcastic Map of Wartime Europe decides to take on Gangsta Asia, a continent five times his size, in the Oliver & Company review. It goes exactly as well as you'd expect.
  • But for Me, It Was Tuesday: When a new villain introduces himself as someone personally wronged by Walt Disney and who now hates him with the heat of a thousand suns, Disney merely replies "That could be literally anyone."
    Mouse: P. L. Travers, maybe?
    Walt: Oh, good guess. Pamela, that you?
  • Butt-Monkey: Mouse gets threatened by (and sometimes hit) with curses and violence quite a few times.
  • Cluster F-Bomb: The Frozen review shares some very profane conversations between Walt, Ub Iwerks, a secretary, and P.L. Travers, after Mouse admits that Jennifer Lee's Precision F-Strike when providing early feedback on Olaf doesn't sound that unusual to him.
  • Comic-Book Movies Don't Use Codenames: He devotes a whole category at the end of each MCU review ("Any names of comic book characters clunkily worked into dialogue that no one would ever say in real life?") to mocking the usual workarounds for this trope. Ironically, he first thought of it while reviewing Thor, which is completely free of this.
  • Conspiracy Theorist:
    • Mouse has gone off on a lot of these throughout the years, regardless of the quality of whatever film he's reviewing. Some of the highlights:
      • The Fairy Godmother from Cinderella is an older version of Pinocchio's Blue Fairy, and Cinderella is actually her daughter from an affair with a human.
      • Cinderella herself befriends talking mice in order to build an army powerful enough to overthrow the king, allowing her to become the queen.
      • Both Jose Carioca and Panchito Pistoles are pure evil, with the latter literally being Satan.
      • Hera from Hercules is not the loving mother, that it seems like she is in the Disney movie, but the real evil mastermind behind the plot, like she also was in Classical Mythology.
      • Jeffrey Katzenberg is actually the Red Skull in disguise.
      • The Cars universe is the same as that of the "Little Toot" segment of Melody Time, and takes place after the sentient vehicles of the world have risen up against and destroyed all humans in a Robot War.
      • El Dorado eventually became Bahia, hence why The Road to El Dorado breaks into a Disney Acid Sequence for "It's Tough to Be a God".
      • Lampshaded in his review of The Prince of Egypt, after a particularly convoluted theory involving God's master plan:
      Sarcastic Map of Wartime Europe: Mouse? Please stop trying to blow up six millennia of Judeo-Christian tradition with your insane fan theories.
      • The Avengers: Infinity War review implies that Mouse suspected a Skrull of replacing Pepper, who he thought made up with Tony too abruptly. The review of Ant-Man and the Wasp makes a similar guess about Janet Van Dyne, since Mouse had no other idea how she survived decades in the Quantum Realm.
    • The Donald in Mathmagic Land review pigeonholes a newly-introduced map of North America into this role; the sight of a pentagram on Donald's palm prompts Mouse to discuss people who see the cartoon as Illuminati brainwashing, but North America calls "Moon Nazis" the real enemy.
  • Courtroom Episode: The Fantasia 2000 review, featuring Mouse as the defendant (for daring to like it better than the original Fantasia), Comrade Crow as the prosecutor, and Claude Frollo presiding. Oh, and Mouse gets a map of Antarctica as his attorney.
  • Crapsaccharine World: A lot of the Bluthiverse's differences with our world are debatable in terms of morality, but Mouse himself undoubtedly has a happier, cushier life. Problem is, Bluth is stated to have absolute power over the life of every living thing on the planet.
  • Cue O'Clock: As a comedic review blog, it tends to lampshade it when a character is about to pull a Let's Get Dangerous! by declaring that it's "Not Fucking Around O'Clock", complete with a picture of a clock displaying the time.
  • Cut His Heart Out with a Spoon: Mouse has Snow White's Queen order the Huntsman to kill Snow White in this manner, in a Shout-Out to Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.
  • Deadpan Snarker: Pretty much everyone, but especially Mouse and SMOWE.
  • A Degree in Useless: Touched on in the Hercules review, which he mentions is the only time his degree in Folklore has any practical use at all.
  • Deliberate Values Dissonance: Disney's particularly problematic characters will usually be introduced thus:
    Crows: Aw, Disney’s never gonna be embarrassed by us no way no how!
    Injun Chief: Ug. Disney not be embarrassed by me ever.
    Si and Am: Ah so. Honorable Disney-san not being embarrassed by us ever.
  • Demonic Dummy: Mouse is not fond of Edgar Bergen's puppets, to the point where Charlie McCarthy later becomes an Ascended Extra in his Rogues Gallery.
  • Demonic Possession: Mouse wonders in his Iron Man 2 review if Pepper nags Tony more often and more obnoxiously than in Iron Man because the spirit of Terrence Howard's Rhodey possessed her.
  • Designated Heroinvoked: Mouse calls Mushu the villain of Mulan II, but admits doubting that the writers meant to turn him evil.
  • Dirty Communists: Comrade Crow.
  • Draco in Leather Pantsinvoked: Played for Laughs with the rat from Lady and the Tramp, whom Mouse christened "Larry" and cast as the Hero of Another Story. Larry's "tragic" death is occasionally referenced in later reviews.
  • Drinking Game: Originally introduced to keep track of all the voices Sterling Holloway did for the Animated Canon, but has since branched out to other Production Posse trends (like Dom DeLuise's roles in Don Bluth films).
  • Eagleland Osmosis: Played straight a few times - Mouse will sometimes reference American politics despite living in Ireland - but subverted just as often. He's made quite a few jokes about Father Ted, and he has no idea why he's supposed to hate Larry the Cable Guy, going so far as to label him the only decent actor in Pixar's Cars movies.
    "Sigh. Not ALL my pop culture references are for you, American readers. Learn to share."
  • Early-Installment Weirdness:
    • Mouse has admitted on his tumblr that his first review of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs looks nothing like his later reviews, such that he decided to review it again five years later. Additionally his first few reviews had audio versions to go with them (though not recorded by him). These were later discontinued.
    • Mouse didn't start summarizing stingers, and the audience's reactions to them, until his Iron Man review, so almost none of his Disney Animated Canon reviews mention those movie's stingers (not even the Marvel-inspired Big Hero 6). Even after the IM1 review, Mouse continues not to mention DAC stingers, with the surprising exception of Ralph Breaks the Internet.
  • Eldritch Location: Bahia, in the blog, is another dimension that takes many forms such as the world between portals and the Dark Dimension, and is so incomprehensibly bizarre that anyone exposed to it is subject to temporary insanity.
  • Enmity with an Object: Mouse has a noted vendetta against the Oxford comma. Repeat, he has a grudge against something that doesn't physically exist.
  • Epic Fail:
  • Ethnic Scrappy: Invoked and defied. When watching The Rescuers, he notices one mouse representing Africa at the Rescuers Society - complete with a big afro. After Face Palming, he instead calls for a spin-off (complete with picture of the mouse's head photoshopped onto Foxy Brown).
    "You know what? I want to see her movie. I want to see the movie made about the little mouse with the afro looking after an entire damn continent."
  • Even Better Sequelinvoked:
  • Evil Twin:
    • Mary Anne for the title character of Alice in Wonderland, apparently.note  The movie never actually shows Mary Anne, but Mouse calls her, "...Alice’s evil Wonderland duplicate who is even now back in the real world taking control of Alice’s life for nefarious purposes." His picture of Mary Anne consists of a still of Alice with a Beard of Evil painted over it.
    • According to the Foodfight! review, Disney's foray into propaganda in the 1940s led to the creation of a second Walt Disney, who produces animation that favors commercial value over artistic value. As a Take That to Saving Mr. Banks, Tom Hanks portrays him.
  • Executive Meddling: invoked Discussed and bemoaned by a lot of reviews, but memorably praised when it prevented A Troll in Central Park from getting any advertising.
  • Eye Beams: Walt Disney has these, for some reason.
  • Face–Heel Turn: Comrade Crow, who goes from harmless - if opinionated - supporting character to ruthless would-be usurper.
  • Face Palm: An image of Alice doing this is used whenever Mouse stumbles onto something offensive and/or illogical in a movie. Occasionally, other characters will be employed.
  • Fair for Its Dayinvoked: He's come to the defense of quite a few controversial scenes and characters, like the crows from Dumbo. Also while he hated Pocahontas he at least said it was good that Hollywood attempted a better depiction of Native Americans than in the past.
  • Fate Worse than Death: Mouse used to view reviewing Pixar's Cars movies as this. Then the Horned King trapped him inside Foodfight!...
  • Follow the Leader: invoked The "Oh my God, [X] you whores!" line crops up almost once a review, whenever Mouse encounters some element taken from an earlier work (or realizes that an element was in turn stolen by a later popular work). Most of the time it's applied to meaningless, cosmetic similarities, but there are a few times when Mouse feels that it's a legitimate case of Serial Numbers Filed Off.
  • Forced Transformation: He became a Mouse when Walt Disney cursed him for not enjoying Beauty and the Beast. He gets a reprieve and Disney decides to turn him into a prince... but he becomes the artist Prince instead, and quickly requests being a mouse again. Also seems to have some sort of Fisher Kingdom effect: he's watched so many cartoons by this point that he's become a cartoon mouse, as opposed to a stock photo of a real one.
  • Formula-Breaking Episode: Once in a while (sometimes as part of a reader request), he'll review something outside the Disney Animated Canon. Whether by design or coincidence, these reviews tend to feed more heavily into the Myth Arc than the "standard" reviews. The review of Mary and Max takes this to another level, as Mouse finds the film so disturbing that he reviews it in the third person to distance himself from it.
    • Taken to a whole new level with his not-review of Inherit the Wind. While he does briefly give his (not-too-flattering) thoughts on it, he mostly uses it as a springboard for an essay on the power of Hollywood History and how much Artistic License is justifiable in any historical movie.
  • The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You: Mouse has interacted with characters in the movies he reviews almost from the beginning, but it only turned serious when he reviewed The Black Cauldron and the Horned King himself showed up...
  • Girl on Girl Is Hot: Invoked in the Peter Pan review, the Cinderella review, and several others.
  • Godwin's Law: Played for Laughs.
    "If you ever suggested watching Der Untergang in anything other than the original German, I’d accuse you of being the first person to ever talk about Der Untergang who was actually worse than the main character."
  • Great Gazoo: Mouse depicts Taika Waititi as a Maori trickster god.
  • Gretzky Has the Ball: Mouse loves to play up his non-American-ness whenever baseball pops up in the movie of the day:
    "We then get a montage of Chicken Little training with his friends to get better at base ball, learning to catch the base ball with the big base ball glove and hit the base ball with the base ball stick. But the coach never lets Chicken Little play because his stats aren’t moneyball enough so he has to sit on the big bench."
  • Grumpy Old Man: Mouse will sometimes play himself as one, despite "only" being thirty as of this writing. See the Wreck-It Ralph review for a particularly funny instance.
  • HA HA HA—No: Employed in the Space Jam and The Fox and the Hound reviews, among others. Typically done with images of LOLCats.
  • Halloween Episode: The Nightmare Before Christmas review is framed as one, though it doesn't really come up besides Walt Disney dressing up as Frankenstein's Monster.
  • Happy Ending Override: The Song of the South and Pocahontas reviews juxtapose Happily Ever After endings with pictures of real-life racist activities occurring later on in those movies' respective settings.
  • Harsher in Hindsightinvoked: Mouse admits that Tony Stark's and Pepper Potts' romantic scenes in The Avengers (2012) feel hard for him to watch after Captain America: Civil War revealed that a few years later, Pepper would break up with Tony.
  • Head-Turning Beauty:
    • Considers Princess Jasmine to be the World's Most Beautiful Woman. He describes Aladdin as falling for her "since he's well, you know, ALIVE."
    Mouse: I was going to say 'straight', but even if he's gay...it's Jasmine.
    Ray Gillette: Girl, please. No one's that gay.
    • Seeing Esmeralda's dance in Hunchback turns him on so much that he even forgets about Jasmine.
    Jasmine: Mouse? I can’t fight my feelings any more. I want you to take me, right here, right now…
    Mouse: Hmm, what? Yeah, I think we have some in the fridge. I’m busy, Jasmine.
  • Heroic BSoD: Undergoes these with suckier movies, especially if there's a Disney Acid Sequence involved.
  • Hidden Depths: Almost every side character on the blog gets a moment now and then.
  • Historical Domain Character: Several members of the supporting cast. Walt Disney is the most prominent one, but there's also Don Bluth, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Otto von Bismarck, First Chancellor of the German Empire...
  • Horrifying the Horror: Pinocchio's Coachman and Charlie McCarthy used to be the things Mouse was most terrified of. Then came The Other Mother. Then came King Candy's One-Winged Angel form...
  • Hype Backlashinvoked: Had this reaction to finding out that The Rescuers had been voted as one of the top Disney films of all time.
  • Hypocritical Humor: The blog's tagline boasted, "Best proof-read blog on the interbet", until Sharpson replaced it with his real name and credentials.
  • I Hate Past Me:
  • I Need a Freaking Drink: He uses this a lot less than other Internet reviewers do, but gladly plays to stereotype when reviewing The Jungle Book (1967).
  • Inferred Holocaustinvoked: The conclusion he draws by the end of Beauty and the Beast. There is no way every servant/piece of furniture in Beast's castle survived.
  • Ironic Echo: The Avengers: Age of Ultron review mocks Thanos' non-threatening sounding dialogue with, "...your demeanor is that of a pouty child", almost what Thanos previously said of Ronan in Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)note .
  • Irony:
    • Mouse's favourite Disney movie is Mary Poppins and he feels it improves everything from the original books by PL Travers. So it is very surprising that Saving Mr. Banks is a film he absolutely hates.
    • He's not a fan of Enchanted, lampshading that it was made for him.
    • The flipside is that although he views Anastasia as a shameless Disney princess rip-off, he still enjoyed it.
    "If Disney had released this, they could be very proud of it."
  • It's the Same, Now It Sucks!invoked: An in-universe example being Mouse's primary issue with Doctor Strange (2016); he feels the same story beats and character arcs were done in a more appealing fashion eight years prior.
  • Jerkass: Walt Disney is this at least 60 percent of the time.
  • Jerkass Ball: Almost everyone in the cast has passed it around for Rule of Funny's sake. Over the years, even Mouse himself has blown up a few Internet-goers for the high crime of disagreeing with him.
  • Just Eat Gilligan: Mouse exclaims while reviewing "Endless Eight" that they should try to kill Haruhi in order to end the "Groundhog Day" Loop.
  • Kick the Dog: The Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 includes a re-enactment of James Gunn and Disney discussing what evil deeds the Ravagers could perform in order to justify Yondu and Rocket killing them. Gunn proposes the Ravagers throw some of their members into space, then act mean towards Baby Groot. The latter riles Disney up into approving Yondu's and Rocket's slaughter.
  • Knight of Cerebus: After spending a few reviews as a Deadpan Snarker, Walt Disney arguably evolved into this, as he established the first hints of the Meta Plot.
  • Legion of Doom: As of the Home on the Range review, every foe or annoyance that Mouse has ever faced (and the Penguin) has banded into one.
  • Let Us Never Speak of This Again:
  • Like You Would Really Do Itinvoked: Mouse argues that The Wasp's Heroic Sacrifice in Ant-Man doesn't get count as getting Stuffed into the Fridge, since it doesn't sound plausible for Marvel to permanently kill off the more interesting member of Ant-Man's and Wasp's duo. He even shares a picture of a woman's silhouette appearing in the Quantum Realm.
  • Mad Artist: Mouse enjoys painting Walt Disney as one.
  • Manly Tears: To the point where he's actually compiled a list of the most tear-jerking Disney moments.
  • Meaningful Funeral: The Winnie the Pooh (2011) review opens with one for traditional animation itself, as the film getting walloped at the box office by Harry Potter means that Disney will likely never go back to another 2-D animated film.
  • Memetic Badassinvoked: He turns Mulan into one, frequently assigning her quotes from famous movie Action Girls like the Bride from Kill Bill.
  • Neighborhood-Friendly Gangsters: Gangsta Asia.
  • New Media Are Evil: Mouse openly admits to being scared of Tumblr (despite having one) and equates Twitter to Satan.
  • Nightmare Fuelinvoked: Lampshaded whenever Mouse accompanies a scary picture with this caption:
    Ah, there's that good old timey Disney terror.
  • Nightmare Retardantinvoked: Mouse comments that the wolves from Frozen look more cuddly than scary, because of their "soft, perfectly rendered fur".
  • Nostalgia Filter: Confronted in almost every review, to some degree, but especially in the "joint reviews" with Mouse's childhood self.
  • Oddball in the Series:
    • While Mouse has relaxed his specific qualifications over the years, the blog remains strictly a place to review movies and TV shows... save for the Ranking the Taoisigh series, which judges each of Ireland's Prime Ministers (as of the early 2010s).
    • Shortstember originally focused on shorts that played in movie theaters. However, since he couldn't find many notable theatrical animated shorts from the 2000s, he reviewed a piece of Web Animation instead: Charlie the Unicorn. For the 2010s he reviewed an episode of Mickey Mouse (2013), "Adorable Couple".
  • Oh, Crap!: Mouse delivers one in the Thor: Ragnarok review, after he discovers that Thanos has finally gotten away from his chair.
  • Opening Scroll: The Steven Universe reviewnote  uses one to detail the show's backstory.
  • Orcus on His Throne: In the Marvel Cinematic Universe reviews, Mouse actually traces how long Thanos sits on his chair, before taking any direct action, with a section titled, "Hey, what’s Thanos doing?" He even includes this section in his review of Captain America (1990), musing that the existence of "constants" likely means that Thanos just sits on his chair in that continuity, as well.
  • Overly Narrow Superlative: The Mouse's idealized take on the 2019 Oscars involved Black Panther taking Best Picture, pointing out that it wasn't the best superhero movie of the year, let alone "the best superhero movie this year featuring a black Marvel superhero and an all-time great hip hop soundtrack," as another film released later in the year also hits all those qualifications.
  • Papa Wolf: Despite having a daughter in real life, Mouse rarely uses this as fodder for jokes. So far. There is this gem from the Labyrinth review, though:
    "I admit that I use to feel sorry for Sarah when I saw this movie as a kid. Now of course, I have a baby of my own and know that unreliable babysitters deserve only tortures not seen since the darkest days of the reign of Caligula."
  • Perverse Sexual Lust: All jokes involving Cleo the goldfish aside, Mouse has pined after Jasmine, Esmeralda, and Jessica Rabbit, among others.
  • Poe's Law: In his post talking about The Lion Guard, many commenters assumed it was meant to be a parody of pointless TV spinoffs of popular films, and were surprised to learn TLG was a real series.
  • Psycho Psychologist:
    • Dr. Ernst Fiedelman has some interesting ideas for Mouse's therapy. Let's leave it at that.
    • Before that, Mouse literally had Hannibal Lecter as a therapist.
  • Pungeon Master: Of late, Mouse has dipped more and more into this.
  • Reaction Shot: The bread and butter of Mouse's reviewing style.
  • Red Baron: Mouse dubs Mulan, "The Death Who Walks", before fabricating several more badass legends about her.
  • Reference Overdosed: Expect a great many shout outs in the Mouse's work, especially as passing comments. His review of Beauty and the Beast, for example, contains references to The Lord of the Rings, Beavis And Butthead, Scary Movie, Lost, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Iron Man, Doctor Who, The Dark Knight, on top of his regular allusions to The Simpsons.
  • Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: In-universe (sort of):
    • He's annoyed by Meg initially in the Hercules review, but comes to warm to her pretty quickly.
    • He admits in the Iron Man 2 review that he originally found Black Widow "bland", but after later appearances gave her writers who actually bothered defining her, and Scarlett Johansson grew into the role, she became his favorite Avenger.
  • Reset Button: Mouse's Forced Transformation status is temporarily "fixed" by Walt at the end of the Beauty and the Beast review, only for him to beg to be changed back when Walt turns him into a literal Prince.
  • Review Blog
  • Rogues Gallery: A large and varied one, ranging from the aforementioned Horned King and Charlie McCarthy to his own brother and the entire fanbase of Beauty and the Beast.
  • Ron the Death Eaterinvoked:
    • In order to fit Hercules into Classical Mythology better, Mouse theorized that Hera was actually behind everything to go wrong in the movie.
    • Also noticed that in Iron Man 2, Rhodes (who had his actor replaced) had become lot more likable, and Pepper had become much less so. He decides that the soul of Rhodey 1 was possessing Pepper, to destroy his replacement and become the One True Rhodey.
  • Rooting for the Empireinvoked: Played for Laughs when he reviewed The Aristocats; Mouse initially sympathizes with Edgar more, but flip-flops between "Team Fleabags" and "Team Edgar" several times before writing the entire movie off and founding "Team End the Damn Movie Already".
  • Running Gag: Dozens of them, at the very least.
    • The "Bahia" mentioned at the top of the page is part of a very convoluted joke that began with his review of The Three Caballeros, and arguably the most-exposed one.
    • Alice face palming in the courtroom scene of Alice in Wonderland is often used whenever something racist or offensive shows up in a Disney movie.
  • Sacred Cowinvoked: Mouse's review of The Little Mermaid (1992) episode "Wish Upon a Starfish" starts out mocking its nonsensical jokes and plot elements, and comparing it unfavorably to the original movie. When Gabriella shows up, Mouse finds the story of her creation so heartfelt and tragicnote , that he decides not to riff the rest of the episode.
    Is it a good episode of television? No, it’s a beautiful act of kindness and solidarity for a family going through the worst grief imaginable. Questions of artistic merit are pretty much moot.
  • Satellite Love Interest: invoked Mouse's review of The Incredible Hulk (2008) laments that during the Silver Age, Pepper Potts, Betty Ross, and Jane Foster seemed to only exist to fawn after Tony Stark, Bruce Banner, and Thor respectively. Fortunately, the comics did gradually give them more distinct personalities, and even their own respective terms as crimefighters. Unfortunately, Mouse admits that in the MCU, Betty still seems to have not much of a purpose beyond fawning for Banner.note 
  • Scenery Porn: Crops up quite a lot in the movies he reviews. These moments will typically be punctuated by the stock image of Dr. Arroway from That Scene in Contact:
    "No... no words. No words to describe it. Poetry! They should have sent a poet."
    • Played with when he reviewed Princess Mononoke. Since he was well aware of Studio Ghibli's reputation, he did send a poet. Who was promptly reduced to gibberish.
    Lord Byron: Holy fucking BALLS that is gorgeous like just WOW!
  • Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Otto von Bismarck pulls this on Mouse in the 101 Dalmatians review, not wanting to turn into "another lame running joke you drive into the ground".
  • Series Continuity Error: Mouse's reviews of the X-Men Film Series lampshade this by asking Guinan Once an Episode if she can detect any space-time anomalies. Said film series has a whole page devoted to its Continuity Snarl. You do the math.
  • Shameless Self-Promotion: A few times, but for a few years, the crowning moment had to be when he tried cashing in on the whole "dinosaur porn" phenomenon that rocked the Internet for all of five minutes. Mouse topped this in early 2016, when the homepage included advertisements for his merchandise above the "more" buttons of every review's preview. (Now they just appear in the upper-right corner of every page.)
  • Special Edition Title: The Cinderella review begins by referring to Mouse as, "The Unshaved Horse".
  • Spit Take: Typically done with an image of either the Sugar Thief or Edgar.
  • Stock Footage: Usually (good-naturedly) mocked with a screencap of the Planeteers shouting their catchphrase.
  • Straw Feminist: Mouse refutes claims that Winifred Banks counts as a Straw Feminist - because she's presented as a lovable character, and any silliness is par the course for any character in the setting.
    "In how many kids movies do you hear the name of Emmeline Pankhurst? How many movies do kids see where the fact that women had to fight to get the right to vote is even mentioned? Not only that, how many movies, period, depict feminism of any wave as something joyous and positive and FUN?"
  • Subbing Versus Dubbinginvoked: Mouse holds that live-action films should always be watched in their original language, but will be more flexible with animation (since both sets of actors are just speaking in a recording booth).
  • Surprisingly Improved Sequelinvoked:
  • Take That!:
    • The reviews and articles do indulge in an occasional insult at someone's expense. Matthew Broderick is a frequent target of this ire.
    • As a running gag in the Inside Out review, he made it a point to deliver potshots at all fifty states (except for Florida, ironically enough).
    • Audrey Hepburn gets a rather mean spirited one in the Mary Poppins review, where Mouse refers to her as a "sentient stick insect that couldn't sing" re: replacing Julie Andrews for the lead role in My Fair Lady.
  • Tempting Fate: "Oh sure. I'll review [Fritz the Cat]. If you can tell me what I say to my wife when she walks in on me watching the scene where all the animals have a bathtub orgy." Cue the results of the 2015 Charity Movie Deathmatch and that actually happened.
  • This Loser Is You: Mouse enjoys playing up his financial, physical, and/or moral shortcomings from time to time to amuse the readership.
  • Toilet Humor: Despite usually looking down on this (it was one of the many, many dealbreakers in Dinosaur for him), Mouse has succumbed to this a handful of times, most notably in the Brother Bear review.
  • Toon Transformation: By the time Mouse reviewed Tokyo Godfathers, in June 2015, he had reviewed so many animated movies, he actually changed into a 2D cartoon character.
  • Torches and Pitchforks:
    • The Angry Mob's whole bag. It's not clear whether it's always the same band of guys every time or whether there are multiple Mobs (in one instance, they began speaking in Japanese to protest Mouse watching the English dub of Princess Mononoke).
    • Parodied in the Hercules review, where only two guys show up after Mouse disses Megara. They're later told to leave after Mouse decides that Megara isn't so bad after all.
  • Tournament Arc: The Charity Movie Deathmatch uses this as a framing device; readers are encouraged to donate to the Love Without Boundaries charity, which then allows them to vote for a specific non-Disney movie for Mouse to review. Movies with the fewest number of votes get "eliminated" in rather grisly ways.
  • Training Montage: Parodied in the Hercules review, where Rocky Balboa, Daniel and Mr. Miyagi, and Mulan all randomly show up during Herc's training.
  • Unfortunate Implicationsinvoked: One of the biggest criticisms he has with the Ant-Man movies, especially the first one, is that the only non-Caucasian members of the cast are outlandish comic relief who exist mainly to be put in their place by the white main characters.
  • Unnecessary Makeover: invoked Like many other viewers, he had this reaction to the Beast turning back into his human form in Beauty and the Beast.
  • Unusual Euphemism: Mouse tends to call underperforming child actors "young gentlemen/ladies who tried their best" instead of ragging on them like he does with adult actors.
  • Upper-Class Twit: Sir Percy Higginbotham McHighbrow (the Third), a rarely-used supporting character typically brought in for moments of Slobs Versus Snobs humor.
  • Very Loosely Based on a True Story: The Don Bluth story arc reveals that the reason for Bluth's Lighter and Softer turn in The '90s was entirely the Unshaved Mouse's fault: Bluth brought in Mouse and several other children to consult on his then-in development film Rock-A-Doodle, and during this meeting Mouse revealed to Bluth that he found his films too scary. Neil Sharpson admitted later that as a child he did meet Bluth during the production of Rock-A-Doodle and had a brief conversation with him, but it was centered entirely around the difference between and cartwheel and a tumble.
  • Viewers Are Geniuses: Doesn't crop up that often, but he does reference some high-concept/obscure material every now and then.
  • Villain Episode:
    • After the review of The Black Cauldron, The Horned King is the one reviewing The Great Mouse Detective. That is, until The Unshaven Mouse takes the reviewing role back (after Basil and Co. escape Ratigan's death trap, fittingly), sending The Horned King to Bahia in the process.
    • It happens again when Bill Cipher takes over the review for Gravity Falls.
  • Vocal Dissonance: When Rob Paulsen voices Prince Eric in The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea, Mouse gets taken so far aback by the switch from Christopher Barnes, that he replaces Eric's face with that of Yakko Warner.
  • What Do You Mean, It's Not Political?invoked: Employed in the Cinderella review, among others.
  • Wild Take: Exaggerated facial reactions are usually treated as an example of the character in question being exposed to Bahia.
  • Wingding Eyes: Mouse interprets rings surrounding a character's pupils as a sign of getting banished to Bahia.
  • Xanatos Gambit: Mouse naturally discusses this trope (and links to its TV Tropes page) while reviewing the Gargoyles episode "Eye of the Beholder".
  • Xanatos Speed Chess: For the above review, Mouse makes up a scene in which Xanatos boasts that the apparent failure of five different plans all lead to success in destroying all life, including some rebellious "spider-mutant commandos".
  • Yet Another Christmas Carol: Despite Mouse's efforts to prevent the review of An American Tail: Fievel Goes West, posted on Christmas Eve 2015, from becoming a Christmas Episode, ghosts from past adaptations of A Christmas Carol and the Horned King visit him anyway.
  • Your Approval Fills Me with Shame: Mouse is horrified when he makes a pun off of how much Russell Means sucks as Chief Powhatan in his Pocahontas review, claiming that he can feel Rush Limbaugh feeding on his soul.
  • Your Head A-Splode: Well, he does come across many a Logic Bomb in his reviews... These are usually marked with a screencap of That Scene from Scanners.

Previous

Index

Next

  • Show Spoilers
  • Night Vision
  • Sticky Header
  • Wide Load

Important Links

Ask The Tropers Trope Finder Media Finder Trope Launch Pad Tech Wishlist Reviews Go Ad Free!
Crucial Browsing
Resources
Top