Fun and Fancy Free (1947)
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Fun and Fancy Free Movie Review
Fun and Fancy Free is a 1947 animated fantasy anthology film which is Disney’s ninth animated feature. It’s better than most package films, but still highly flawed.
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“Never saw such a dismal pair.
A deadpan doll and a droopy bear“
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The film opens with, interestingly enough, Jiminy Cricket as he enters some house and stumbles upon a record and plays it. That record is the film’s first segment – Bongo. Now, as great as Jiminy Cricket is in ‘Pinocchio’ (everything is amazing in that masterpiece), he is not particularly interesting here and is rather reduced to being a mere plot device.
But something about this beginning is very interesting and intriguing and that is the fact that in the scene where Jiminy is on a library, two of the books there have readable titles and those are ‘Alice in Wonderland’ and ‘Peter Pan’. It is obvious that this is a hint from Walt who was struggling at the time to bring those two to the big screen largely due to war and it is a nice touch and a great reminder of what’s yet to come from the studio.
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So the first segment is called Bongo and is based on the tale ‘Little Bear Bongo’ by Sinclair Lewis, following a circus bear named Bongo who wishes to live free in the wild. He breaks free from a circus and meets a female bear and his love interest, later learning how bears show affection with one another.
This segment has a lot going for it – it is at times very engaging and its heroes are charming, but it mostly benefits from very good musical sequences performed by Dinah Shore. But it still has that annoying and dated love/sexual affection aspect which is also present in ‘The Three Caballeros’ with Donald Duck there being in a very good mood. The dreaming and love sequences tend to slow down the movie significantly. It is a solid piece, but also somehow forgettable. It’s both sweet and fluffy as well as quaint and very much dated.
The second and better remembered segment is Mickey and the Beanstalk. This segment is an adaptation of Jack and the Beanstalk with Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and Goofy as peasants who discover Willie the Giant’s castle in the sky through the use of some magic beans. Although Donald is funny as always, he is again not given enough screen time, and all three of them fail to bring the chemistry and playfulness as would be expected. Do not get me wrong, they are great per usual. They just did not get enough screen time to have fun together.
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The film is narrated by Edgar Bergen in live-action sequences and that is what undermines this segment the most thanks to annoying and dated humor of his with the dummies and again live-action which is totally unnecessary. They are mostly boring, but the ending scene with Giant’s arrival and Bergen’s fainting is nevertheless funny and memorable. I just wish that we got a longer runtime for this otherwise great and very well told story where the highlights are the fun and well executed castle scenes and Donald losing it was of course the funniest bit.
Let’s talk about the characters. Bongo in the first short is rather forgettable, but definitely cute and endearing. His girlfriend, though, is very uninteresting, but the bears are a fun group for sure. Mickey is pretty good here, but Goofy is sorely underutilized. Donald is as hilarious as you would expect from him. And just the fact that we got these three together in a film needs to be respected more and that’s easily the highlight of the entire Fun and Fancy Free. The Giant himself is also very strong as this gentle, yet at times angry; fun and childish but also rather clever guy who’s not easily fooled.
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As I said above, those live-action segments absolutely killed this entire cartoon in my opinion. They are so dated and only the ending is amusing, but otherwise they are unnecessary, overlong and taking too much from the runtime. The actor and his voices are particularly annoying and dated. The first segment should have been shorter, the second should have been much longer and the puppetry should have been cut out entirely and that way the film would have been infinitely better.
So the editing is very bad as is the direction. The structure is also pretty mediocre and I do wish that Jiminy Cricket narrated the film and was present in the second segment instead of the annoying actor. But the animation I have to complement as it’s very strong for a package film with rather pleasing colors, a polished look to it and solid character designs. The animation along with a couple of songs and just two instead of more stories led to this film being much better than half of the package films, but it’s still inferior to ‘Ichabod’ and ‘Caballeros’.
Finally, let’s talk about the soundtrack. This is actually one of the better soundtracks from this period as it does have a couple of songs which I really like. I’m a Happy-Go-Lucky Fellow isn’t one of those. I do like Jiminy and his voice, but this song is the definition of forgettable and uninspired. Too Good to Be True is effective as a love ballad and so well sung by Dinah Shore, but pretty much of its time. Lazy Countryside is forgettable and My Favorite Dream is okay for what it is, but far from great.
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I do like My, What a Happy Day as it’s rather endearing and fun, though way too short. The standout of course is Say It with a Slap which is regrettably hated by today’s brainwashed PC audiences for promoting violence among couples when in fact it isn’t. It’s just a fun cartoon scene not to be taken seriously. I loved the humorous scene as the best scene in the segment and the song is ridiculously catchy, a lot of fun and even quite charming.
Fun and Fancy Free is offset by those terrible live-action puppetry scenes which are annoying and they ruined the film for me. The editing and structure are also pretty bad. But it has a couple of nice, fun songs and it’s quite well animated. Bongo is a solid, endearing segment whereas of course Mickey and the Beanstalk is the highlight as it is wonderful seeing Mickey, Goofy and Donald together in one film. It’s a problematic, but ultimately pretty solid package film.
