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Director: Chuck Jones
Release Date: February 26, 1949
Stars: Bugs Bunny
Rating: ★★★★★
Review:
In ‘Mississippi Hare’ Bugs Bunny accidentally ends up at a Mississippi steamer, where he encounters colonel Shuffle, a small moustached Southerner who resembles Friz Freleng’s Yosemite Sam a lot.
Like Yosemite Sam, the colonel keeps taking the plunge, in an excellent series of gags. Bugs Bunny is particularly suave in this cartoon, and so are the backgrounds. But the highlight of the cartoon may be the superb and intoxicating animation of Bugs Bunny dancing with a straw hat.
The colonel would return to the screen the next year in the Charlie Dog cartoon ‘Dog Gone South’.
Watch ‘Mississippi Hare’ yourself and tell me what you think:
This is Bugs Bunny cartoon No. 57
To the previous Bugs Bunny cartoon: Hare Do
To the next Bugs Bunny cartoon: Rebel Rabbit
Director: Burt Gillett
Release Date: September 30, 1933
Stars: Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse
Rating: ★★★
Review:
Mickey is a jockey in a horse race.
Unfortunately, his horse Thunderbolt gets drunk just before the race starts. So he rides a pantomime horse, with his two black stable boys in it, instead. Remarkably, they win, due to a colony of angry and determined wasps, who chase the two poor black boys to the finish and into the distance, while Mickey receives all the glory.
‘The Steeple Chase’ is one of those ‘adventure type stories’ Mickey began having in 1932, and which were undoubtedly inspired by Floyd Gottfredson’s comic strip. ‘The Steeple Chase’ is a prime example: it shows clear similarities to ‘Mickey Mouse and his horse Tanglefoot‘, which ran about the same time (from June to October 1933). The colonel from ‘The Steeple Chase’ returns in that comic strip as a grumpy judge.
The early scenes firmly state why Mickey should win the race, e.g. when Minnie tells him “you gotta win, Mickey, or you’ll break the colonel’s heart”. Thus we are more involved in the horse race then in Mickey’s boxing game in ‘Mickey’s Mechanical Man‘ from earlier that year. Nevertheless, it remains a fact that Mickey’s actually cheating in both these cartoons, and misusing the two black stable boys while doing so. This makes it rather difficult to sympathize with Mickey. Moreover, the race is hardly as exciting as the one in ‘Barnyard Olympics‘ (1932), and the cartoon is by all means inferior to Gottfredson’s classic comic strip. The best gags come from the numerous ways in which the wasps attack Mickey and his fake horse.
Watch ‘The Steeple Chase’ yourself and tell me what you think:
This is Mickey Mouse cartoon No. 60
To the previous Mickey Mouse cartoon: Puppy Love
To the next Mickey Mouse cartoon: The Pet Store
Dr. Grob's Animation Review 