The Spirit of ‘43 (1943)

The Spirit of ‘43 Review

The Spirit of ‘43 is a 1943 animated short film from the Donald Duck series. It is a familiar cartoon.

This is another documentary in which Donald deals with income taxes and his benefit to the American war effort. The main issue here is that second half that basically reused footage from the previous entry about the taxes. I really found that choice bothersome and it tarnished what otherwise could have been a surprisingly solid flick.

Yes, I still prefer this one over the previous movie due to the first half being so fun and interesting. This section consists of Donald fighting a duck who promotes spending money for taxes and another duck who promotes spending it for fun. The latter turns out to be a Nazi in a very memorable twist while the former is very reminiscent of Scrooge McDuck, being pretty much his prototype. I loved Donald’s dynamic with the two and it’s a shame that the rest of the movie didn’t continue it.

The Spirit of ’43 has a terrific first half that was a lot of fun, but the second half is reused footage that was boring and tiresome.

My Rating – 3.4