À cheval!

Get a Horse! (2013)

*** (out of 4)

This winning short from Disney was originally released and played before the FROZEN feature. The story is quite simple and Mickey and Minnie are trying to battle Peg-Leg Pete who eventually throws Mickey off the "movie" and into the movie crowd. Once in the crowd Mickey has to use some imagination to try and rescue Minnie who is still in the movie. GET A HORSE! was rather remarkable to see on the big screen because it starts off in B&W just like the original Mickey Mouse shorts and I thought this was a great way to show younger kids a bit of the past. Once the characters start falling from the movie, Mickey then turns to color and he even makes the screen wider to fit today's movies. For the most part I thought this 6-minute short contained a lot of wonderful imagination and especially once the characters were off the screen and seeing how they could defeat the villain. There were a lot of great laughs throughout the picture and especially with some of the harmless violence that was in so many of the original cartoons.

As a huge fan of classic Disney and as someone who likes a lot of their modern stuff(though there have been a fair share of misfires), Get a Horse was really delightful and while Frozen is a great film and one of their best since the Renaissance this short that preceded it was even better. The animation mixes black and white classic animation and colour CGI, with the crisp and fluid black and white and the colourful and vibrant CGI that moves more naturally than that on Mickey Mouse Clubhouse it not only looks great but it is very cleverly used as well. The soundtrack is lively and with beautiful orchestration and themes that you'll recognise immediately. The sound effects are well-incorporated, some from the very early stuff that are preserved quite well, and are not misplaced or bizarre-sounding. Get a Horse has humorous dialogue and a story that is from start-to-finish boundless fun and energy and it's as clever as the animation too. Just as good are the gags, they're reminiscent of classic Disney but there is also a very modern Disney vibe, so it will appeal to anybody, child and adult, regardless of where abouts they were born. All the characters engage, with a delicious villain in Pete and Mickey who has the kindly quality he has now and also the heroic character in the old classic Disney. Minnie is sweet as well, and it was great to see Horace and Clarabelle, two characters often neglected(or they were for a long time before House of Mouse came on the scene). The voices are fine too, though it was initially a tad odd hearing (modern) Pete voiced by someone other than Jim Cummings, like the sound the original voices are well-preserved. All in all, delightful and recommended without any hint of hesitation. 10/10 Bethany Cox

When me and my movie theatre-working friend went to watch Frozen at the place he works at, this cartoon short was attached to it. Begun in the old school black-and-white drawn phase with the original screen dimensions, when Mickey is thrown off the screen, he becomes a 3-D computer-generated color character filling the rest of the current outlines of the frame. And with that, the real fun begins as many tricks suddenly become possible with various ways of turning the screen-or frames-whichever way one wants it to go! I also was surprised that Walt Disney himself was credited with the voice of his famous mouse before finding out here that the studio not only used vintage tracks of his from previous cartoons but also those of Marcellite Garner for Minnie and Billy Bletcher for Peg-Leg Pete. I found most of the thing quite creatively funny so on that note, I highly recommend Get a Horse!

When I first heard there would be a new Mickey cartoon, I was extremely hyped up and what really got me into it was the fact that it would feature Uncle Walt's archival recordings as Mickey Mouse, and it would mix hand-drawn animation with CGI. When I finally saw it, I was very pleased with the outcome. The comedy is genuine with the imaginative slapstick we loved in the classic Mickey shorts, no gross-out gags whatsoever. It even includes a few pop culture visual jokes like the Apple ringtone and Horace's Captain America T- shirt(usually, it would ruin animated adaptations of the beloved classics *AHEM* The Lorax, but here it worked cleverly). The visuals are also groundbreaking, it is fantastic what they do with combining two different animation mediums. Overall, Get A Horse! was an adorable, hilarious, and faithful short that celebrates the history of the mouse we all know and love in so many inventive ways possible.

A blast from the past as Mickey Mouse and friends deal with the lascivious Peg-Leg Pete in this respectful and loving tribute to Walt Disney's early Mickey Mouse cartoons. It's done with a delightful mix of hand-drawn black & white animation in the style of those early cartoons and modern CGI color animation, still holding true to the original models of the characters. I love that they also used some archival audio from Walt, Billy Bletcher, and Marcellite Garner. Frankly, it's the best Mickey short in decades. I've always enjoyed the first Mickey cartoons a lot. The character has long since become the poster child for corny but this short hearkens back to a time when he was fresh, playful, and funny. Kudos to Lauren MacMullan and co. for this creative and clever short that mixes the present and the past in a way that should bring smiles to the faces of young and old alike.