"Classic Cartoon Favorites: Volumes 5-7"
DVD Review
by Kevin Carr
| MOVIE: **** (out of 5 stars)
DVD EXPERIENCE: * (out of 5 stars) Not Rated Studio: Disney Back to DVD Review Home |
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Not too long ago, Disney gathered up a couple dozen of their classic cartoons featuring the top characters in four volumes. These four discs were devoted to Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy and Chip ‘N’ Dale. After a successful run of these discs, Disney is releasing more cartoons, this time packaged in themes rather than characters.
Volume 5 is “Extreme Sports Fun,” Volume 6 is “Extreme Music Fun” and Volume 7 is “Extreme Adventure Fun.”
This entire DVD series is like a bunch of packages of candy. They’re sweet pieces of cartoon history without the danger of overload. Plus, my cartoon watching age pre-dated home video, so I had to rely on seeing these shorts in the cinema or on television. And since we didn’t have any Disney channel equivalent as a kid, it was actually quite rare for me to see a Walt Disney cartoon.
Even today, the classic Disney cartoons aren’t broadcast as frequently as the other staple of Disney cartoons from the television animation house. Classics from other studios - like MGM’s Tom & Jerry, Warner Bros. Looney Tunes and Hanna Barbera’s entire offering - can be found on cable. So, for me it was a treat to watch some of these older Disney cartoons.
My least favorite of the bunch is the Music collection. It’s not just that they repeated a cartoon from Volume 3, but that has a bit to do with it. After all, the Walt Disney Company has done enough cartoons to find more than one Goofy cartoon about music.
Ultimately, the Music cartoons aren’t as funny as the other two. A lot of this has to do with the fact that music doesn’t always lend itself to slapstick the way that sports and adventuring does. We’re left with a couple cartoons that search for the beauty in music when I really just want to see Donald Duck wig out like he does in other cartoons.
I’m split between “Extreme Sports Fun” and “Extreme Adventure Fun” because I love slapstick. I would have preferred to see more of the Goofy educational videos in the “Sports” disc, but there are enough of them in the series to make things work.
The “Adventure” disc paints with a broad brush, covering everything from Mickey hauling a trailer to Donald protecting a Sequoia tree. This also contains some classic Goofy educational videos, as well as an old film featuring his last name, Geef.
Each DVD has eight cartoons, which amounts to a little more than an hour of programming. There’s no other features to speak of on the DVDs - just like the first four volumes. It would have been nice to have some commentaries, but I really wasn’t expecting much for such an easy-to-assemble make-money video for the Mouse House.
I’ve always been more of a Warner Bros. cartoon fan rather than I have been a Disney cartoon fan, but with these new DVDs, I’ve got a new appreciation for them. I hope Disney continues to release collections of the classic cartoons to keep my sweet tooth at bay.
Specifications: Fullscreen (1.33:1). English subtitles for the hearing impaired.
impaired.
