WesternAnimation 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.
WesternAnimation Not a Bad Short on Itself At All, But...
There's nothing actually downright wrong with 'Get a Horse' as a short, taken on its own merits. It's technically all you could expect from a Mickey Mouse cartoon. The comedy, while risquer than we might expected from Mickey ever since the Silver Age, effectively gives a feeling of the old days of the Golden Age of Animation, and while Pete's mistreatment seems to be a sore point to many reviewers, it never gets any worse than the standard treatment given to a Looney Tunes villain. Since Pete was just earlier indulging into what basically amounts to G-Rated sexual harassment on an unsuspecting Minnie, it's difficult to feel any sympathies for him here.
The visual gags work, and the clever treament of the theater movie format gives the short a delightful meta treatment that never feels overdone, but flows naturally.
The short's only major problem doesn't even come from its own terms, but from what it means in the context of its company. Judging from its publicity, and its behind-the-scenes story, Gets a Horse feels like a last token bone thrown to 2D before fully embracing CGI because it's the FUTURE, see? The company obviously had no faith on making a fully 2D THEATRICAL short about Mickey, and if you can't do that kind of things with your star franchise, well, there you go. 2D is left for TV releases, and that only at increasingly scarcer frequences. I love the new 2D Mickey shorts made for TV, but they feel like they're only there and done that way because the company has lost all its guts to make a fully 2D theatrical release with their best known characters, whether it's a short or a feature lenght production.
However, the short itself is a nice little treat. It won't make a revolution in animation or even rank into Mickey's all time Tope 10, but it holds itself very well for what it is.
WesternAnimation A modern old-school throwback that's fresh and genuinely funny
As a kid, I never found old-school cartoon slapstick funny. And I still don't, having watched some old-school cartoons as an adult. But this actually made me laugh, and laugh frequently.
Get a Horse looks, sounds and feels like a long-lost Disney cartoon from the 1930s. It features the same basic type of plot (Pete tries to capture Minnie, Mickey rescues her), and the same type of slapstick, and all voice acting is done using actual recordings of Walt Disney's voice as Mickey Mouse. At first glance one might even mistake it for something out of that era, and I might have as well had I not read about it beforehand online.
That was until the modern jokes came in.
When a large wagon comes by with many of the Disney cast on it, Clarabelle Cow hitches a ride by flashing her... udder. Which if you think about it, is literally her breasts. That was the first time I ever laughed at a Mickey Mouse cartoon, but it soon wouldn't be the last.
Eventually, they break the fourth wall quite literally. The characters enter and exit their 2D black-and-white cartoon and enter the theater itself as colored 3D models that sadly leave a bit to be desired, but the idea is still very well done. Classic cartoon gags play out very differently, such as when Mickey takes a water hose and sprays it into a cell phone in the modern real world, causing it to pour out of an old-fashioned phone in the 1930s cartoon world and spray Pete in the face.
Some have questioned the "udder" jokes and risque elements of this cartoon, though technically, it is if anything an accurate throwback to the olden days. Early Disney cartoons were quite daring and were aimed at adults; Disney himself started toning down Mickey Mouse once he realized the character had become a hero to kids. This might bring up some debate as to whether or not making an adult-oriented Mickey cartoon as a pre-show to a family picture is a good idea, but the actual show itself was very entertaining, and a fresh take on an animation icon.
WesternAnimation Horrible all the way through
This is Disney trying to be prove they can be modern and failing in absolutely every way possible. Which is ironic because it's the short in front of Frozen, the film that absolutely proved Disney has a place in the modern world and can make amazing things.
This short made me ashamed to be in the cinema, I felt like walking out. There's actually something really wrong feeling about someone shoving a cow in front of them and lifting her skirt to show her udders to the bad guy in order to make him sick at the sight. It felt pretty violating.
And then the CGI Mickey just doesn't work, he doesn't feel like he has a character and is a bit strange and alien. Seeing cartoon slapstick in CGI doesn't really work the same, watching someone turn into a plane is a little uncanny valley. It feels soulless and out of place. We've proven CGI is a good medium, Pixar showed that 20 years ago, but Disney still haven't found how to translate those little slapstick shorts into these visuals.
Seeing Minnie be the object with a bow for Mickey to rescue is also pretty tired.
It just generally wasn't funny and didn't feel interesting or well-fitting
WesternAnimation Almost awesome...for the first few seconds
When I first heard about this short, I was psyched. Disney making a 1920's-style Mickey short? Maybe there's hope yet! But, what I didn't know was that they were going to throw in color and CG, iphones and pop culture references as soon as possible, and it became a gag reel with no sense of plot. I felt cheated and insulted by this Bait and Switch, quite frankly. The short sums up the problem with Disney these days, people at the company have good ideas, but idiot executives looking at demographic charts and concerned with being "hip" and "fresh" put a leash on any creativity. That is why traditional animation is dead, they're too afraid to release even just a simple theatrical short that doesn't have CG for fear of losing the attention of an audience that, according to them, can't go twenty seconds without something modern on the screen. By the way, in my opinion Frozen would have worked better if it were called The Snow Queen and was done with cel animation.
WesternAnimation Inventive animation tricks aside, I just don’t like this short.
I was never the biggest fan of Mickey Mouse to begin with, never got into his stuff until like… House of Mouse and the like? But a tribute to Mickey’s earliest cartoons mixed with an animation shift sounded fun. Unfortunately the shift between 2-d and 3-d animation is all this short has going for it.
This does not feel like a celebration of the mediums. It feels like they’re just throwing Mickey a bone before they shove his ass through a photo processor and make him 3D because “that’s what sells!” And I have no problem with disney doing 3D films from now on, it doesn’t bother me. But this felt truly disingenuous in its intentions. And I know Lauren wanted the b&w sequence to go on longer.
I don’t mind the crueler jokes and risqué humor. Clarabelle has been used in jokes about her udders being naked before. And Pete is a VILLAIN, basically attempting to kidnap Minnie. So his treatment by the end of it all is very well deserved, especially with how the screen is used against him after he did everything to close off the fourth wall. And yet? It has concepts that leave a lot to be desired, like how the more modern real world interacts with the ancient and archaic cartoon world.
This is on a personal note: I don’t like the retro voices. Something about it just hurts my ears. Especially hearing Pete. I dunno, it just… it felt triggering to me personally somehow. I know they did it for authenticity and I am glad Will Ryan came back one final time to do Pete (rest in peace btw) but the Billy Bletcher dialogue, especially his laughter just doesn’t mesh well and comes off as obnoxious in the worst ways. Everyone and their grandma knows Walt Disney is dead; you aren’t fooling anyone by trying this experiment, not even kids.
Bottom line: as ambitious as Get a Horse is? It fell flatter than Pete’s Dotted Male Gaze when he saw Clarabelle. I think the candlestick phones ever present line of “Make away for the Future!” Has a point that while the past should indeed be celebrated, these older cartoons were upgraded and moved with the shifting landscape and animation techniques for a good reason. Other cartoons have pulled off the retro aesthetic far better aside.