The Fifth-Column Mouse Review

The Fifth-Column Mouse is a 1943 animated short film from the Merry Melodies series. It is a solid short.

It follows a grey mouse teaming up with a cat, not knowing that the cat plans to eat him and all the brown mice in the house. This is yet another very obvious World War II cartoon allegory with brown mice being Americans, the grey mouse being Japanese and the cat being Nazi. I really disliked that and the overly patriotic tone of the movie.

But otherwise, it’s a pretty solid, fun little flick with some good action and solidly executed scenarios. The animation is very strong and although this is another cat and mouse cartoon, it’s somewhat different than others in story and it works in terms of the entertainment value. The grey mouse is particularly memorable and the best developed character. I also really liked the catchy musical numbers here.

The Fifth-Column Mouse is solid, albeit overly patriotic and timely. The animation and score are great though, the characters are solid and the action is fun.