- "Make way for the future!"
Get a Horse! is a 2013 Disney animated short starring Mickey Mouse, the first theatrical short featuring the character since 1995's Runaway Brain. It was directed by Lauren MacMullan (The Simpsons, The Critic, Avatar: The Last Airbender) and is the first Disney property to be directed solo by a woman.
In this 1928 throwback short, Mickey and his friends, including Minnie Mouse, Clarabelle Cow and Horace Horsecollar, enjoy a musical hayride until Peg-Leg Pete arrives in his runabout and tries to get them off the road. The resulting scuffle ends up with Pete kidnapping Minnie and Mickey separated from them, finding himself in a very unusual place in the process. As he tries to make his way back to rescue Minnie, Mickey soon discovers that the world he has found himself in works very differently from the world he's used to... and that he might be able to make this work to his advantage.
This short is notable in that it utilized Walt Disney's voice for Mickey Mouse. The short was released on November 27, 2013, on the same theatrical bill as Frozen (2013). It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film, but lost to Mr. Hublot.
Get a Horse! provides examples of:
- Alertness Blink: When Pete has Minnie in his clutches, Mickey's ears briefly turn into exclamation points.
- Amusing Injuries: Happens to Pete over and over again once Mickey starts manipulating the theater screen.
- Animation Bump: The scene where we "chase" Pete from behind him, where not only is the background animated, but also tilts with the camera.
- Aspect Ratio Switch: The short starts out on a small screen on black. When Mickey breaks through the screen, the rest of the wide area lights up to reveal the theater the cartoon is playing in. Afterwards, Mickey pulls back the curtains on the theater stage to reveal a wider animated screen underneath.
- Born in the Theatre: Mickey breaks through into the theatre.
- Brain Bleach: After Pete gets a good look at Clarabelle and her udder, he rubs his eyes trying to get the image out of his head.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: Not just "breaking" it, completely shattering it and dancing over the rubble.
- Brick Joke: When Pete arrives in his car, a chicken runs away from him and lays an egg, the egg then grows legs and also runs away. At the end when all the characters and the scenery appear in CGI, the chicken and the egg also return.
- Bullet Seed: Mickey uses Horace as a makeshift biplane and he spits Milk Duds as ammo. Later, Pete closes up the screen by swallowing a can of nails and spitting them across the bottom.
- The Cameo: Near the end, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit pops in for a quick cameo.
- Chase Scene: Pete chasing Mickey and his friends around and around on both sides of the screen.
- The Chew Toy: Pete gets constantly battered in the short.
- Circling Birdies: Mickey gets stars above his head when Pete punches him into the theater's ceiling and hangs from an overhead pipe by his tail.
- Confused Question Mark: Horace has one appear over his head. Also, Pete's hat curves into the shape of a question mark when the animals swing against the screen.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: The gag with Pete staring at Minnie, and the outcome thereof.
- Exorcist Head:
- Mickey's head does a 360 while following his crawling sentient shoe.
- As does Pete when viewing the wagon in the background.
- Film Within a Film: The premise of the short is that the characters somehow manage to literally break the fourth wall and thus, can go between it as long as there's a hole in it.
- Fisher Kingdom: Our world not only makes the characters colored, it also depicts them as CGI characters.
- Foreshadowing:
- The anthropomorphic horn's line "Make way for the future!" becomes more poignant in that 1928's Mickey enters the world of 2013 and interacts with modern technology.
- So is Pete saying he's going to "knock [Mickey] into next week." Only to overdo it and send Mickey into next century.
- Found Footage: Parodied. It was initially promoted as a "lost" Mickey Mouse cartoon that was made shortly after Steamboat Willie, but partway through, it proves to be anything but.
- The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You: Your nachos will get wrecked, too. And it works both ways; if Pete thinks the theater screen will protect him, he's got another thing coming (and then some).
- Fourth Wall Greeting: After Mickey crashes through the screen, he initially greets the audience before realizing just where he is.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: Blink during the end celebration and you'll miss Oswald popping in to wave at the crowd!
- Funny Background Event:
- When Mickey imitates an Army bugle to call the others for help, the hay wagon can be seen in the background moving like a tank.
- And when Pete gets covered in foam so as to resemble Santa Claus, it can be seen behind him moving like a Christmas sleigh.
- Genre Throwback: The animation is modeled after the earliest Mickey shorts. The CGI animation is even rendered in a way similar to how the characters moved in 2D.
- Gravity Is a Harsh Mistress: Played with; Mickey flips the screen upside-down, causing Pete to fall from the ground above him.
- High-Pressure Emotion: Steam comes out of Pete's hat when he gets mad.
- Humiliation Conga: Pete undergoes this when Mickey controls the screen to have him fall from the sky, get stabbed with a pitchfork, get electrocuted, etc.
- Involuntary Smile of Incapacitation: When Mickey controls the screen to comically injure Pete, Pete lets out a few random statements with a large smile before collapsing.
- Iris Out: When the cartoon ends, Pete tries to get back into the screen through the iris, but gets stuck.
- Logo Joke: The Disney logo at the end is in black and white, with "Disney" written in an older signature font and Clarabelle is jumping over the castle with a trail of "pixie dust" behind her.
- Male Gaze: Pete gives one to Minnie, illustrated by a dotted line going from his eyes to her. When Mickey places Clarabelle in front of Pete, the line goes limp.
- Manipulative Editing: Walt Disney, Marcellite Garner, and Billy Bletcher reprise their respective roles as Mickey, Minnie, and Pete through edited audio from old Mickey cartoons. While Russi Taylor and Will Ryan provide new lines for Minnie and Pete, the editors decided not to do the same thing for Mickey. This created a problem when they learned that Walt Disney had never said the word "red" in Mickey's voice; it took two weeks for them to edit together the individual phonemes to assemble the word "red" and make it sound like a surprised statement.
- Medium Awareness: The characters become this once Mickey was literally knocked right out of the cartoon.
- Medium Blending: Traditional black-and-white animation combined with color computer animation.
- Mickey Mousing: As a throwback to the classic shorts, the characters move to the soundtrack of the short.
- Monochrome to Color: The cartoon shows this when Mickey enters the real world and becomes a colored 3D model, as opposed to the 2D black and white cartoon from which he came, to show how far animation has come.
- Non Sequitur, *Thud*: When Mickey Mouse was manipulating the theater screen to hurt Pete, he said, "Company dismissed!" (The line originally came from Donald Gets Drafted.) And right before that, he said, "I used to have a little cat once!" (Originally from Mr. Mouse Takes a Trip.)
- Not Hyperbole: Pete really knocks Mickey into more than next week. He knocks him into the present day, many decades later.
- Oh, No... Not Again!: Pete cries, "Not again!" when Mickey manipulates the theater screen so that Pete's car drops on his head for the third time.
- The Oner: Beyond the theater screen, the whole short takes place in one shot!
- Parachute Petticoat: Minnie's skirt acts as a parachute when she falls.
- Portal Picture: The theater screen acts as a portal between the real world and the world of the cartoon.
- Reaching Between the Lines: When Mickey calls Pete from a smartphone, Horace sprays a fire extinguisher into it and the foam hits Pete on the other end.
- Real-World Episode: The true premise of the film is that the Steamboat Willie-era Mickey Mouse inadvertently managed to literally jump out of the theater screen while his short was playing. In modern day times.
- Reality Warper: Mickey and pals flip the screen and warp gravity and time to thwart Pete.
- Retreaux: Done in the style of a 1920s cartoon until Mickey Mouse finds himself in the real world.
- Rewind Gag: Played With. When Mickey literally breaks the fourth wall, he discovers he can use this trope to help him defeat Peg Leg Pete by rotating the screen. He rewinds and fast forwards the on-screen events in order to wear Pete down.
- Rubber-Hose Limbs: As a throwback to the original shorts, all the characters have them.
- Running Gag: Whenever a character crashes into the theater's seats, a woman can be heard yelling "My nachos!".
- Scenery Censor: When Mickey jumps out of his shorts, he uses a fence to cover his shame.
- Screen Tap: A variation; Pete throws Mickey and Horace against the screen, causing it to bump, until they break through into the real world.
- Shout-Out:
- Minnie's line "Where are we, Poughkeepsie?" delighted many citizens of that city in New York state.
- Horace is briefly seen wearing a Captain America T-shirt. Besides being a nice little Call-Forward to the later-released Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Cap is a contemporary of Mickey and the gang who also found himself in the modern day.
- A cellphone left on the stage plays the iPhone "Marimba" ringtone
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- Shown Their Work: They really put effort to give it that early sound film quality, including cel mistakes, film scratches and poor-quality soundtrack.
- Show Some Leg: Clarabelle does this to hitch a ride on the wagon, revealing her udder as she does so.
- Something Else Also Rises: Inverted: Pete's stare at Minnie is drawn with a straight dotted line, when Mickey notices and replaces Minnie with a Clarabelle, Pete's stare line becomes flaccid and limp.
- Split-Screen Phone Call: A rather strange variation. Mickey, from outside the screen, calls Pete, who is inside, with Mickey using a smartphone and Pete using an old candlestick phone.
- Stock Footage: All of Mickey's dialogue is made up of voice clips recycled from old shorts. The same goes for Minnie and Pete's dialogue, mostly.
- Title Drop: After Pete is defeated, his car horn comes to life and honks at him "Get a horse!"
- X-Ray Sparks: When Pete hits the telephone wires, he gets a nasty shock portrayed in this fashion.
