Disney is deservedly getting good notices and making some nice money (it will probably crack the $100mm mark this weekend) off ‘Enchanted.’ Everyone agrees that part of the film’s charm – beyond its winning performances and the half 2D/half CGI chipmunk Pip – is how it tweaks the Disney canon, but in the most affectionate manner.
But I have news, people – it’s not like it’s never been done before. In fact, it’s not even like Disney has never done it before.
House of Mouse ran Saturday mornings on ABC from 2001 through ’04. The show’s premise was not unlike the early 1960’s primetime Bugs Bunny Show. For those of you younger than myself and Jerry Beck, in BBS the Oscar®-winning rabbit hosted a stage show featuring the Warner Brothers characters. New wraparound footage wrapped around shorts from the WB vaults (with an occasional newbie created for the show), often bridging directly into them (in far-from-seamless transitions), while providing a narrative to tie the half-hour together.
The camera in BBS never turned around to show the audience, but HOM kicks the premise up a notch: Mickey is the emcee at a nightclub whose audience consists entirely of characters from every and any Disney animation; villains share tables with their antagonists, similar heroes compare notes and a meta time is had by all. The premise did triple duty: it provided a half hour running narrative; it tied together the separate shorts that Mickey introduced to the audience; and it served as a clothesline for any number of throwaway gags based on the characters’ personas. And as in Enchanted, it’s all done with post-modern love and affection for the source material.
The one I caught today had Jiminy Cricket acting as everyone’s conscience, giving the characters advice that would’ve turned their movies into shorts since none of them would’ve gotten into any trouble. (Strangest koan: to Lady and the Tramp: “some folks have puppies;” pan over to Beauty and the Beast: “some folks don’t.”) Another episode had Aladdin’s Iago and Jafar performing a spoken-word version of ‘Bibiddi-Bobiddi-Boo;’ you had to be there…
By the way, the shorts were by and large new, too – produced for the series with only a handful pulled from the Walt Vault. (“Black and White Day” was an excuse to include 1932’s “The Whoopie Party” a Prohibition-era ‘toon with Mickey and Daisy throwing a bash wild enough to bring the cops running – who promptly join in on the fun.) Now that the standard length for a TV short is 11 minutes, it was a real pleasure to see modern animators working within the classical 6-minute template
Who knows, maybe House of Mouse is where Disney got the idea for Enchanted… HOM is bouncing around the Toon Disney schedule; TIVO it (or record it on your Betamax if your hardware is as out of date as mine) and judge for yourself.
Joe Strike has written about animation for numerous publications. He is the author of Furry Nation: The True Story of America's Most Misunderstood Subculture.
