It's a Call Back to Mickey's original personality. In his early days, he could be a prankster and sometimes jerk.
So the Grandfather's Clause, then? I think that him exposing the cow to Pete already went far enough towards this side of him. Slo-mo pitchfork was just way too far,and came as a conclusion to already long sequence of Pete being punished, IMHO.
Why ate people so squicky about the cow? It was like 2 seconds and just slapstick.
Pete kidnapped Minnie and beat up Mickey and his friends. You expect Mickey to go easy on him?
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I didn't really mind Pete's Humiliation Conga since they had a lengthy point beforehand he was in control and beating on Mickey to set up for it. It wasn't an overblown cliche slapstick cartoon where the hero utterly destroys the villain just for bugging him mildly.
I will admit the short's slapstick did get drawn out however, it didn't copy the fast pace of the classic era as well, the cartoony antics slowed everything down instead of moved it along. Also they maybe could have done with less retro voice clips, it was a cool concept to have Disney and Bletcher 're-voice' Mickey and Pete again, but it was blatant they struggled finding old clips to work with the events. It's not like the originals had a lot of dialogue anyway.
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The visual interplay is awesome, slapstick soon grows relentless and dull.
Well, what more can I say? I liked the traditional animation elements and the way they interplayed it with the CGI, as well as the general battle Mickey and Pete had through the cinema screen. That was rather inventive and interesting, and so was the fact that Pete could exploit the whole medium (i.e. the divide between his black-and-white 2D world and the 3D CGI world Mickey gets ejected in) rather well for a while.
However, the slapstick elements already hit a wrong note when Mickey distracts Pete by flipping cow's skirt up at the beginning, and totally jump the shark when the tables finally turn towards Mickey. The sequence of Pete getting thrown onto the sharp objects about a dozen times was already less funny and more mean-hearted. However, the way they then had to flip the frames back so that Pete could get the pitchfork rammed up his ass in pseudo-slow motion was the clincher that unequivocally turned Mickey from his usual slapstick hero self into an un-ironic asshole like Superman in the Superdick website.
All in all, it’s a tremendous waste of the opportunity they had with the technique: if their previous shorts like Paperman were sweet and positive, even if they could do with some restraint, this one just left a bad taste in my mouth.