Review: Fun and Fancy Free (DMC #9)
We’re moving right along with the ninth movie in our Disnerd Movie Challenge, Disney’s Fun and Fancy Free. If you watched with us last night then feel free to skip the synopsis and get straight to our review.
Synopsis
The film opens with Jiminy Cricket singing as he explores a house. He soon meets a forlorn looking doll and teddy bear. To cheer them up, he pulls out a record which begins to play the story of “Bongo.” Bongo is a circus bear, and while he is the star of the show he is also a prisoner. One day he hears the call of the wild from his train car and he breaks free, riding his unicycle out into the forest. At first he loves the wilderness, but he soon discovers it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. After spending a fitful night in the woods, he wakes to meet a female bear named Lulubelle. They immediately fall in love with each other, but their romance is rudely interrupted by Lumpjaw—a giant male bear who also has an interest in Lulubelle. When Lulubelle tries to make her choice known by slapping Bongo, Bongo is insulted because he doesn’t realize her slap is a sign of affection. When Lulubelle tries again she accidentally slaps Lumpjaw who victoriously takes Lulubelle away to celebrate with the other bears. As Bongo watches the celebration he comes to understand what Lulubelle’s slap meant. Bongo challenges Lumpjaw, and after outsmarting him and sending him over a waterfall, he is reunited with Lulubelle and they happily slap each other.
We return to Jiminy Cricket and we now see that the doll and teddy bear are smiling. Jiminy discovers an invitation to a house across the street and decides to hop on over. He then joins a live-action sequence where a man is telling the story of “Mickey and the Beanstalk” to a girl at her birthday party with the help of his ventriloquist dummies. The story opens with a female harp singing a happy tune that keeps Happy Valley, well, happy. But when a dark shadow steals the harp, the water dries up, the crops wither, and farmers like Mickey, Donald, and Goofy are left to starve. As Mickey divides up their last slice of bread and last bean into portions, Donald goes mad with hunger and nearly kills their cow. Mickey decides that he will take the cow to market and try to sell it, but when he returns with nothing but three magic beans, Donald again gets mad and tosses the beans from Mickey’s hands. The beans fall between the floorboards, but under the light of the full moon they begin to grow into a massive beanstalk. In the morning, the trio find themselves in a new world at the top of the beanstalk where everything is gigantic. They soon discover that the harp is being held captive here in a nearby castle by a giant. The giant captures Donald and Goofy in a locked box, but Mickey manages to escape. The harp sings the giant to sleep so Mickey can steal a key from the giant’s pocket. Once he gets the key he frees his friends and the trio carry the harp out of the giant’s castle. The giant chases them and then falls from the top of the beanstalk, presumably to his death. When we return to the live-action sequence, though, the giant appears, pulling up the roof of the house to peek inside as he searches for Mickey.
Thoughts Before Watching
Megan: I definitely remember the “Mickey and the Beanstalk” cartoon (it may have been my first ever introduction to the concept of starvation with the see-through bread slices and divvying up a single bean among Mickey, Donald, and Goofy…). I also have vague memories of Jiminy Cricket singing a song called “Fun and Fancy Free” in the opening. The other cartoon is escaping me at the moment, but I’m sure I’ve seen it before…
Kevin: Before I last watched this a few years ago, for some reason I thought the giant in “Mickey and the Beanstalk” made his first appearance in “Mickey’s Christmas Carol.” Not sure why as that doesn’t make a lot of sense. In any case, I was already pretty familiar with the story, and I know I enjoyed it when I was a child. I also remember something about ventriloquists… and there’s also a cartoon about a circus bear in this movie… but what was it?
Megan: Bongo! That’s the other cartoon! I remember enjoying that cartoon as a kid, with Bongo the circus bear and the little girl bear he falls in love with. I also remember thinking the “A Bear Likes to Say It With a Slap” song and concept was funny as a kid.
Thoughts After Watching
Megan: So it turns out I probably never watched these cartoons as part of Fun and Fancy Free, or at least not “Mickey and the Beanstalk.” After some research I discovered that the “Mickey and the Beanstalk” cartoon aired with Dumbo on TV at some point, and since my family watched Dumbo on a VHS that we recorded from TV my best guess is that we watched “Mickey and the Beanstalk” on that same VHS. That particular version of “Mickey and the Beanstalk” doesn’t include the live-action sequence with the ventriloquist dummies, so watching that part of Fun and Fancy Free felt entirely new to me.
Animation gets an upgrade.
Kevin: This was a tad more interesting than the last two films, but only just a tad. It’s fun to watch the animation get better over time. To my immediate knowledge, I think this has the first “realistic” looking hand-drawn human character since Snow White? I mean… she’s a harp, but still. The point I’m making is that her animation is much more fluid than Snow White, so it’s interesting to see the studio’s progress on realistic human animation vs. animals or caricatures. In fact, at this point in the timeline the art is looking closer and closer to films like Cinderella and Alice in Wonderland (I’m thinking of the shot of Happy Valley with the castle on the hill; what a gorgeous looking shot!) This is exciting to me because it means we’re getting nearer to the era of classic films that I remember the most, and I’m looking forward to re-watching those with Megan and sharing those thoughts with all of you!
Kevin: Still, this film is similar to the two before it; it somehow suffers from simply being what it is compared to what it could’ve been, especially when looking at what came before this era and what came later. The cartoons are satisfying enough to watch only if there’s literally nothing else on. There was so much about “Bongo” I had forgotten about, and “Mickey and the Beanstalk” doesn’t hold up as well as I remember. Goofy remains the most hilarious character (I laughed out loud when the trio was trying to remove water from their boat and Goofy was getting it all wrong by actually tossing water back in (I’m a little bit of a sucker for silly slapstick like this), but Donald is still a bit of an idiot (why, Donald? Why did you antagonize that giant dragonfly?), and Mickey, ironically, is the most boring character because he’s the typical hero who can do no wrong at all.
“You worry too much.”
Megan: Though this film premiered after the end of WWII, it’s easy to see how the people of the time might have been a bit downhearted like the doll and teddy bear in the film and may have sought films such as this to escape their worries. We see Jiminy commenting on how the newspaper has nothing but bad news, and saying that everyone worries too much—they should be more happy-go-lucky, like him. While I’m not a fan of telling kids (or anyone, really) to ignore their sadness and to just be happy, there is some truth to the idea that the media and “grown-ups” focus too much on the negatives and forget to have fun. It was true back then, and I think it still holds true now.
Circus = Animal Abuse
Megan: It was true in Dumbo, and it appears to be true for Bongo—a circus is a terrible place to be if you’re an animal performer. While most of the animals in Dumbo were allowed to roam somewhat freely within the circus (except for Mrs. Jumbo once she was imprisoned), Bongo is cuffed around his neck the second he exits the stage. He’s treated roughly by the human hands we see (they seem to be male hands, by the way), and confined to his tiny train car bedroom/cell. The things he’s forced to do as part of the performance—riding a unicycle on a tightrope, and jumping from a great height to land on a tiny sponge—are incredibly unnatural things to ask a bear to do, not to mention highly unsafe. It’s no wonder he has such a strong desire to escape! And yet when he does escape he has to relearn how to be a normal bear. I’m not sure what the people at Disney thought about circuses, but it seems to me that they must have wanted to call attention to the animal abuse and change public sentiment.
Two guys fight over a girl…again.
Megan: So when two male deer fought over a female deer in Bambi I was more inclined to let that slide because those animals were animated to look more realistic and it was presented more as “this is what deer do in the wild.” These bears, however, are much more anthropomorphized, and since these bears dance and twirl and spend a lot of time on their hind legs I can’t give them the same pass. “What’s wrong with guys fighting to win a girl’s affections?” some might ask. Well, to quote Princess Jasmine from Disney’s Aladdin, “I am not a prize to be won.” When male characters are constantly fighting each other over a female character, the female character becomes an object. It rarely matters who the female character favors in such a fight—it’s all about which male character is our hero and how he will eventually win the battle and take home his “prize.” Case in point: Lulubelle clearly favors Bongo and doesn’t care one bit about Lumpjaw, but once she accidentally slaps Lumpjaw her fate is sealed—unless another male challenges Lumpjaw she’s stuck with him, whether she likes it or not.
Kevin: I’ll restate here what I said in our review for The Three Caballeros — men, please do not do fight over women. Frankly, no one should do this regardless of gender or sexual orientation, but this is especially important in regards to men fighting over women given the historical context. This was clearly an issue almost a century ago, and it hasn’t gone away. As a society we may have made some strides but we still have a ways to go. If there’s any nobility to be gained in relationships, it’s letting potential partners choose who they wish to be with and be accepting of those choices rather than fighting and robbing women of their choice in some ridiculous show of male dominance. While there may be a “happy ending” to “Bongo”, he and Lumpjaw could use a lesson here.
Abuse should not equal love.
Megan: I think most of us watching “Bongo” for the first time would be just as confused as Bongo when Lulubelle slaps him. A slap means “I love you”?!?! Since when?! I get that for the story they were telling they needed Bongo to misunderstand Lulubelle’s non-verbal communication, but did the bears have to say it with a slap? I don’t think so. I know when I was a kid watching this cartoon my mom would every so often reinforce that we do not slap our siblings or our parents to say “I love you,” but I’m sure there must have been at least a few times where my siblings and I tried to mimic what the bears were doing in the movie. And what about kids who grow up in abusive households? Are they supposed to then believe that that’s how their parents or other relatives say “I love you”? While as a kid I mostly just thought that sequence was funny, I can see now how it could send the wrong message and I certainly won’t be letting any future kids of mine watch it without reinforcing why slapping is not a way to show affection.
Kevin: I will admit that when I saw this scene during our watch I was more amused than disturbed. Not at all because I thought it appropriate, but because initially it came off more comical than problematic. I said to Megan something along the lines of “what an odd way to show affection.” My additional reaction was to somewhat shrug it off and compare it to kinks. But after Megan and I discussed this, there’s something a little darker here than perhaps what was intended, but nevertheless it’s there. I would never tell consenting adults how they should live out their relationship, but I think there’s something problematic about this scene. To be honest, I think it was likely intended to be funny, but we’re talking about children’s programming here. Children are often influenced by what they see on television or in movies, and what’s going on in “Bongo” could easily be misunderstood.
The obligatory Bechdel test score.
Megan: Not much to say here other than that the film as a whole fails the Bechdel test. Yes, there are female narrators and characters throughout the film, but no two females ever talk to each other.
The harp is an unintentional metaphor for feminism.
Megan: I don’t think the creative team behind “Mickey and the Beanstalk” intended this, but watching the cartoon now I can see the whole story as a bit of a metaphor. If you take women (here represented by the harp) out of the equation, everything goes wrong. While the harp lived in Happy Valley, the valley was happy and prosperous, but the moment a giant man stole her away the valley (which as far as we know is now only inhabited by Mickey, Donald, and Goofy—three men) basically died. In a similar way, when women are kept out of decision making, corporate boards, elected office, or anything else, our world is less off for it. The stats are there to prove it. To give just one example, the global economy could be up to $28 trillion larger if more women were employed at the same rate, in the same roles, with the same pay as men. To go back to the movie, when the harp is returned home and allowed to use her talents to their fullest potential, the valley once again prospers and the giant man is vanquished. Like I said, it’s probably not at all what the creators intended here, but watching it as a viewer in 2020 I find it quite interesting. Did anyone else pick up on this?
Kevin: My thoughts exactly. As soon as the harp was kidnapped and Happy Valley turned into a barren wasteland, one of my first thoughts was how it needs a woman in order to fix things. Come to think of it, the message of “Mickey and the Beanstalk” appears to be a complete 180 of “Bongo.” In the second cartoon, everything basically sucks until a woman fixes the situation, and in the first, we can almost certainly say that it takes a man to “fix” it (I put that in quotes since we’ve discussed at length how there are issues with that story). There’s an intriguing juxtaposition at play here, and I’m also not sure how intentional any of it was, but it’s interesting to both look at and think about.
Things are getting better, but only a little.
Kevin: With all that said, I’ll give “Bongo” some credit for just simply being mildly entertaining. This cartoon along with “Mickey and the Beanstalk” have more compelling stories than most if not all of the segments from the previous two films that I rank Fun and Fancy Free just barely above them. With “Bongo”, I at least can empathize with the title character for his desire to escape captivity and live a fulfilling life. I can enjoy the sillier elements of this cartoon, and I can enjoy the story simply because there’s a story to even be invested in.
Verdict
Kevin: 3
Megan: 3
Final score: 3
What did you think of Fun and Fancy Free? Let us know in the comments below!