Tennis Racquet

Director: Jack Kinney
Release Date: August 26, 1949
Stars: Goofy
Rating: ★★★★
Review:

After four years of working on feature films, Jack Kinney returns as a director of Goofy shorts to remain Goofy’s sole director until the series’ end in 1953.

Kinney’s first Goofy film in four years, ‘Tennis Racquet’ is a transitional film: together with the next Goofy short, ‘Goofy Gymnastics‘, it’s firmly rooted in the 1940s Goofy tradition, being a sports cartoon, similar in content to ‘How to Play Football‘ (1944) and ‘Hockey Homicide‘ (1945). Moreover, in the first scene we hear one of the Goofy characters (the cartoon contains several of them) singing Goofy’s own theme song “the world owes me a living”, and in the end we can hear the typical Goofy yell, introduced in ‘The Art of Skiing‘ (1941). The short even features a slow motion gag, not seen since ‘How to swim‘ (1942).

On the other hand, it can also be seen as the first entry of Goofy’s second series, for the character has been completely redesigned. The next year this new, redesigned Goofy would turn into Mr. Geef, the everyman.

Like ‘How to Play Football’ and ‘Hockey Homicide’, ‘Tennis Racquet’ has no educational value: the cartoon consists of one frantic tennis match between two Goofy characters. It’s a fast and funny cartoon, full of silly gags. The highlight may be the running gag of the stoic gardener, who enters the game at several points, undisturbed by the frantic action around him.

Watch ‘Tennis Racquet’ yourself and tell me what you think:

This is Goofy cartoon No. 23
To the previous Goofy cartoon: The Big Wash
To the next Goofy cartoon: Goofy Gymnastics