11 – The Adventures of Ichabod and
Mr. Toad
With this movie done I'm finally
through the six package movies and I can move on to the great stuff!
I should probably talk about this one
first though. This final story in Disney's attempt to save some money
is 1949's The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad. And
overall, it wasn't terrible. Hell, I'd even say I kinda liked it.
The Wind in the Willows
The first of only
two shorts in this movie is the story of Mr. Toad. The story is
basically the story of this Toad who keeps getting himself in trouble
until he finds himself in a situation he can't talk his way out of.
It's told through narration which would usually drive me pretty crazy
but was actually really well done in this story. The narrator is
interesting and descriptive but still knows exactly when to get out
of the way to let the story go by itself for a bit.
I also really liked
the characters. Mr. Toad, in particular, is really interesting to me.
I liked that the other characters keep talking about him before he
shows up so that we can wonder who he is exactly. That's answered
very quickly with his first scene being him riding in a seemingly out
of control carriage through the country. That's accompanied by a
great little song that gives us the perfect image of who he is and
what kinds of faults he has.
The other
characters are great as well. They don't get nearly the same focus
but I can see very clear motivations for each of the characters. They
all want Mr. Toad to behave but each one acts differently about it.
Macbadger is worried that Mr. Toad is throwing away all his money.
Ratty wants to knock some sense into Mr. Toad and Moley wants the
same but is much less forceful about it.
The actual story
worked really well for me too. The court scene where Mr. Toad is
accused of stealing a car was really well done, if a bit slow paced.
The evil prosecutor was great and had some funny moments. It was also
great to see Mr. Toad seemingly lose the fight and get sent to jail.
When he finally escapes we get to see a pretty cool escape sequence
where he gets chased through the streets and then finally over the
water on a boat.
By the end they
prove his innocence and see that Mr. Toad has finally grown up a
bit...until we see that he really hasn't. Usually something like this
would annoy me but I think this message is a bit better. Wouldn't it
be nice if we could be as carefree as Mr. Toad?
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
I really think this
movie got 2 for 2. The story starts off in very much the same way.
The narrator introduces us to Ichabod Crane and Brom Bones and gives
us a feel for who each character is. Again, the narration is great.
When we meet
Ichabod we get another great music sequence that lets us know exactly
who he is and what his faults are. That is to say that he's a bit of
a scumbag. Over the next few scenes that idea is really reinforced.
He seems to have a bit of an obsession with food and women and is a
bit of a schemer to get what he wants.
Brom, on the other
hand, doesn't get nearly as much attention. At first, he's introduced
as a pretty good guy who likes playing jokes on people but never
really intends to hurt anyone with them. I really don't get that
feeling as the short goes on though. Over time it seems that he's
just also kind of a jerk.
And that's really
my big problem with this short. I just really didn't know who to root
for in the story. Partway through we meet Katrina, a young, beautiful
and rich girl who both Ichabod and Brom fall in love with. We should
clearly be rooting for Brom because he has been shown to be a good
guy while Ichabod was shown scheming to marry her and take her
father's money for himself. This is sort of unclear in the actual
story though. Brom is mostly used for comedy as he consistently loses
to Ichabod despite his underhanded attempts. The more I see Brom
trying to win Katrina with dumb plots like making Ichabod dance with
a fat girl, the less I like him and want him to win.
In any case, Brom
sees that Ichabod is a bit superstitious so he tells a ghost story
about the headless horseman to freak him out a bit. Ichabod goes home
and gets attacked by the horseman and vanishes by morning. That whole
sequence was also pretty cool. The song to introduce the horseman was
a bit hokey but the actual sequence where he appears was actually
pretty exciting. I guess my only other comment would be that I'm not
actually really sure what happened. Did Brom set up the whole
horseman thing and kill Ichabod? I don't really think he would go
quite that far. Brom does win at the end so at least Ichabod can't
take all the money. It's not the most satisfying ending but I still
liked it. It was a pretty solid adaptation of a well known legend.
I'm off to try on
some glass slippers.
11 down. 42 to go.
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