Review: Melody Time (DMC #10)
Happy Friday, fellow Disnerds! We continue our journey with the tenth film in the challenge, Melody Time. As always, feel free to skip ahead to the review if you’re familiar with the film. For the rest of you, read below for our recap.
Synopsis
There are seven segments in this film. In “Once Upon a Wintertime,” two young lovers named Jenny and Joe enjoy a winter’s day out by riding in a sleigh and ice skating, where they are joined by a couple love-struck rabbits. Although the skating starts out wonderful, soon Jenny and the female rabbit are upset with their love interests and leave. But as they unknowingly skate towards thin ice and the male rabbit cracks it in frustration, Joe and the male rabbit realize their lovers are in danger and immediately try to rescue them. It takes the help of some additional animals to safely rescue Jenny and the female rabbit, and Joe and Jenny reconcile and ride off in their sleigh, bidding farewell to the animals. In the segment “Bumble Boogie” a tiny bumblebee desperately tries to ward off a literal display of musical imagery. Between flowers and butterflies made of piano keys and trumpets, Bumble experiences havoc until he puts all the keys back together and a giant piano is restored. “The Legend of Johnny Appleseed” tells the tale of an apple planter who thanks the Lord for his apples, but also longs to be a pioneer and journey west. Johnny’s guardian angel gives him the encouragement and tools he needs to succeed. With his signature pot upon his head, Johnny befriends both animals and humans along the way as he grows his apples and fellow pioneers spread apple trees across the land. Though he eventually passes away, Johnny is forever remembered as Johnny Appleseed.
In “Little Toot,” the title character wants to be like his father Big Toot and tow ships through the port and out to sea, but can’t seem to stay out of trouble. After one of his antics causes an ocean liner to crash into the city, Little Toot is treated like a criminal and his father demoted. However, Toot is able to prove himself when he spots a lost boat in the middle of the ocean during a devastating storm. With the help of lightning bolts, the little boat tugs the lost boat safely back to port, and Little Toot’s bravery is celebrated. The next segment is called “Trees,” and revolves around the poem of the same name. The poem is recited as colorful images of trees changing through the seasons are shown. Next up is “Blame It on the Samba.” Here, the Aracuan Bird cheers up a down-in-the-dumps Donald Duck and Jose Carioca by introducing them to the pleasures of the Samba. The final segment is “Pecos Bill,” a retelling of the famous cowboy and his horse, Widowmaker. Here, the Sons of the Pioneers sit around a campfire and tell the story of how the West was shaped and influenced by Pecos Bill. Pecos Bill and Widowmaker are the perfect team, but one day Pecos meets Slue-Foot Sue and they fall in love, making Widowmaker jealous. During Bill and Sue’s wedding, Sue decides to ride Widowmaker while wearing a bustle. This causes her ride to go awry, and she is bounced straight to the moon, much to the horse’s delight and Pecos Bill’s anguish.
Thoughts Before Watching
Kevin: This is probably the first film in our challenge where I hardly remember a thing even though I know I watched it before. It’s not like The Reluctant Dragon which I had never seen before. The most I can remember was a few vague things about “Pecos Bill” and him riding around the west shooting everything in sight, and I think “A Cowboy Needs a Horse” is on here? I’m curious how much of this movie will come back to me after we’ve finished watching it.
Megan: I remember that this one has my favorite wintry cartoon! I forget what it’s called, but its animation was used for the “Sleigh Ride” song on one of the Disney Christmas Sing-Along videos, and since “Sleigh Ride” is my absolute favorite song, naturally the animation is also one of my favorites. I don’t remember what else is on here, though. Is this the one that has “The Green with Envy Blues”? Ooh! Does it have “A Cowboy Needs a Horse”?!
Thoughts After Watching
Megan: So clearly I had this confused with another Disney movie, because this one does not have “The Green with Envy Blues” nor “A Cowboy Needs a Horse” (both are fun by the way—especially “A Cowboy Needs a Horse.” Seriously, go watch it right now if you aren’t familiar with it). While I did remember “Once Upon a Wintertime” (what I previously referred to as the “Sleigh Ride” animation) and the Johnny Appleseed cartoon, I don’t think I ever saw the other cartoons before, so I must have seen these cartoons on their own. My best guess is I only saw “Once Upon a Wintertime” as part of one of the Christmas compilation videos, and I believe I saw “The Legend of Johnny Appleseed” either on TV or as part of another video compilation (I seem to have vague memories of Johnny Appleseed being paired with a cartoon about Paul Bunyan…he was the guy with the giant blue ox, right?)
Kevin: Well, I was mostly disappointed that “A Cowboy Needs a Horse” wasn’t on here. Please do check out the link Megan shared above, either to take a stroll down memory lane or to experience something new! Anyway, after finishing this, it occurs to me that I saw “The Legend of Johnny Appleseed” a very long time ago. The song was familiar, and I remembered the scene where Johnny comes across a group of people making apple pies. The cartoon that really surprised me the most though was “Pecos Bill.” I could have sworn the ending I knew was Pecos Bill and Sue ending up at the top of a mountain and watching the stars like a romantic couple. But… that didn’t happen, and now I have no idea where I saw that scene. I’ll have to look that up. Also, I realized I saw parts of “Once Upon a Wintertime” in one of the Disney Sing Along Songs Christmas compilations. One additional thing to note is that this film again shows animated art tools literally creating the animated work; can’t get enough of that technique!
Most of these cartoons aren’t all that memorable.
Kevin: The bad news? Another dull, unexciting film compiling several dull, unexciting shorts. The good news? We’re almost done with these compilation films. We have one left to go before we’re back to the features (for those of you keeping up with the list, just wanted to quickly point out that, yes, we skipped Make Mine Music. Strangely, it’s the only Walt Disney Animation Studios feature not currently on Disney+). Anyway, Melody Time offers little in the way of fun. This movie and Make Mine Music were created to essentially be like Fantasia, but more contemporary and far less ambitious. Maybe these musical hybrid films just don’t appease modern audiences? It’s hard to say. “The Legend of Johnny Appleseed” is by far the most enjoyable segment, and “Trees” was interesting from an animation point of view. “Pecos Bill” had some few moments going for it until the later parts (read on for our thoughts there). Still, even if it wasn’t a Fantasia knock-off, these anthology films are just getting very stale at this point.
Megan: Even if I had seen this movie before, I don’t know that I would have remembered many of the cartoons. The “Bumble Boogie” sequence, for example, is reminiscent of some animations from Fantasia in that the animation complements the music, but beyond that there isn’t much story to it. The same can be said of the poem about the tree, or “Blame it on the Samba.” I’ve heard the poem before (I was an English major, after all), but the animation almost makes it less memorable because it lacks story. Initially I’d expected that “Blame it on the Samba” would be a repeat of a sequence from either Saludos Amigos or The Three Caballeros, but this is a different clip entirely…and it’s no more amusing than anything we saw in both those movies. Even “Little Toot” which has some story to it doesn’t quite do enough to hold my attention.
Harsh punishment for a child, don’t you think?
Megan: Speaking of the “Little Toot” cartoon, I was somewhat shocked at how extreme his punishment was. Sure, he did cause a pretty big boating accident that destroyed part of the city, but he’s also just a kid who was playing in the wrong space. Chaining him around the neck (what is it with these cartoons and chaining characters around the neck? First Bongo, now Little Toot?), carting him off beyond the safety of the harbor to be abandoned on his own and taunted by the buoys… And meanwhile his disgraced father is punished by being forced to tow the garbage barges. I mean thank goodness they turn things around by having Little Toot save a distressed ship in the middle of a storm, but still—if anything this is a commentary on society failing a child rather than a child making a mistake and suffering the consequences for his actions. I wonder, did Disney intend this to be a commentary on child incarceration? Or were they trying to scare kids into behaving with a cautionary tale?
Ladies, you could have been better…
Megan: As much as I love “Once Upon a Wintertime” because of its connection to “Sleigh Ride,” I have to admit that the female characters in this are pathetic. They ignore the warnings about thin ice, get stranded on ice floes, and then faint when things get too dangerous. I can’t say the guys in this cartoon are much better—the man and the male bunny are completely useless in the rescue mission, so it’s truly the horses, birds, and squirrels that save the day while the man and male bunny get all the credit and affection from their rescued sweethearts.
Megan: I don’t think I’d ever seen “Pecos Bill” before, so I was initially excited when Slue-Foot Sue came on the scene. I mean look at her—here’s a western gal riding in on a giant catfish that she roped herself. She’s brave, fearless…and done in by her bustle. Yup. Even though she can ride Pecos Bill’s bucking mad horse, Widowmaker, there’s apparently too much spring in her bustle and that extra spring shoots her up to the moon, never to be heard from again. Because she chose to be a cowgirl and have a bit of femininity on her wedding day she not only doesn’t get to marry the man she loves, she’s exiled to the moon. I’m sorry, but…what?! I had to do a little research on the original Pecos Bill tales and I gotta say they don’t get any better. In one version, Pecos Bill realizes that if Sue keeps bouncing she’ll eventually starve to death so he shoots her to put her out of her misery. So…I guess thanks, Disney, for not outright killing her? (But let’s be real…she’s probably going to die on the moon, too.) I’d like to request a rewrite where Slue-Foot Sue shows Widowmaker that just because he’s jealous doesn’t mean that he’s lost his best friend Bill forever, and that there’s room enough for the three of them to be friends and get along.
It should come as no surprise that this film also fails the Bechdel test as no two females ever speak to each other.
I’m sorry, Pecos Bill, but a woman is not the solution to your lust problem.
Megan: While we’re on the topic of Pecos Bill, I just have to call attention to this one line that really bothered me. When Pecos Bill first sees Slue-Foot Sue he’s overcome, “burning with a fire that can only be cooled” in the depths of Sue’s blue eyes. Here at least the feeling between the two characters appears to be mutual (Sue even initiates their first kiss), but what if Bill’s affections were not returned? I worry that part of the implication here is that a man’s lust can only be satisfied by the object (er…woman…) of his desires, and that he has no control over himself. That’s a bit of a dangerous line to walk, don’t you think?
Kevin: The outdated depictions of men, women, and friendships in the “Pecos Bill” segment is very gross. This is actually insulting when you think about it; a man is dangerous and wild unless a woman can tame him? No way is this right, especially as it implies women are responsible for “fixing” men, and, as Megan said, this sets a dangerous precedent. What then happens when a man is just a terrible human? Is the woman at fault for failing to control him? Also, at the end of the segment Widowmaker is partially responsible for knocking Sue all the way to the moon. And why did he do that? Because he was jealous that she came between him and Pecos Bill. Cartoon or not, these are terrible messages to send to children even if they might be unintended.
Megan: Also…Widowmaker is a terrible name for a horse. I think it was supposed to imply that he would make his enemies’ wives into widows by killing his enemies, but it becomes a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy in a different way, since the horse ultimately make a widow out of Bill.
“The sun and the rain and the apple seed”
Megan: I think the cartoon I enjoyed most in this film was actually “The Legend of Johnny Appleseed.” While there’s not a female character to be seen other than the background characters, I’m okay with that because it’s largely a one-character story (well, Johnny and his guardian angel). It wasn’t until Johnny started singing that I realized I still knew most of the words to his song. Here is a guy who’s not a typical hero—he’s not especially strong or brave; he’s just a humble apple farmer with a dream of heading out west with everyone else. I love his interactions with the woodland creatures and how he inadvertently befriends them (even the skunk!) when they were all suspicious of him.
Pro-American expansion in cartoon form.
Kevin: I think “The Legend of Johnny Appleseed” has an overall nice message to it. John Chapman is generally remembered for his kindness, conservation, and, obviously, helping to popularize apples in America. I wonder if this is part of why apple pie became a staple of American culture… need to look into this. No matter how you slice it though (no pun intended), Johnny’s desire to join the pioneers and go west alludes to the American obsession with Manifest Destiny. That may not have been the point of this cartoon, but there was one part in the segment where the narrator said “push back the forest” or something close to it as apple farms start to rise up. I might be pushing it here, yet as I watched this I couldn’t help feeling that there’s a pro-American expansion subtext here. It doesn’t help that the settlers in the cartoon are white, because that was the whole point behind Manifest Destiny—that Americans, specifically whites, had a God-given right to claim North America for themselves. Not to mention the depictions of natives look less than flattering. I also think there’s a bit of an irony in destroying nature to plant apple trees. Tales like those of Johnny Appleseed are no doubt meant to be wholesome, and I would agree that they are. But the 1940s (and the 19th century) were far different times and that doesn’t mean this kind of tale works for modern audiences.
Racial depictions show this film’s age.
Megan: While “The Legend of Johnny Appleseed” depicts Native Americans in a somewhat less than ideal way, I found them much easier to watch than the depictions in “Pecos Bill.” It wasn’t just that it was a cowboys vs. Indians story—the way the natives were animated just comes off as super racist watching it today. (For those of you who watched the link I included above for “A Cowboy Needs a Horse,” I have similar thoughts about the natives animated in that short.) I get that the original Pecos Bill story was that he made the painted desert by shooting at the natives and scaring the war paint right off of them, but watching that segment of the animation made me uncomfortable from today’s social perspective. There’s no way animation like that would be allowed by the studio or current audiences if the cartoon were made today.
Kevin: I must’ve watched a very truncated version of “Pecos Bill” when I last saw it, but I absolutely do not remember the depictions of Native Americans this cartoon showed. That war paint scene is just wrong on so many levels. It’s stuff like this that doesn’t look good today. We know that Disney, both as the man and as the company, were very much believers in the ideal American Dream and were inspired by the stories of the USA’s formation and expansion. Times were different back then, but that didn’t make it right. I’m not sure what the goal was by showing cartoons like this or “The Legend of Johnny Appleseed”, if there was a goal at all, but they are very hard to watch. Nevertheless, it’s incredibly important that we do not shy away from the mistakes of past works of art. To do so would be as if to pretend these prejudices never occurred, and it’s crucial we confront these.
Still, the artistry shows what’s to come.
Kevin: There are issues with how the segments are structured in terms of story and themes, but if we step back and look entirely from a technical aspect then the perspective shifts. This film is probably the most “musical” of the package films, again not including Make Mine Music since we’re not reviewing it. I think this might have given the animators some more interesting things to work with. The art is also looking richer with each subsequent film, and I love the range of techniques used from the flat styles of “Once Upon a Wintertime” to the impressionistic styles of “The Legend of Johnny Appleseed” and to the surrealism of “Bumble Boogie” (anyone else reminded of Dumbo during that segment?). “Pecos Bill” has problems with its story, but the technical achievements through the animation styles (note that I’m saying animation, not character designs), the deep color palettes, and the catchy-enough tunes are the sort of thing we come to see in the 1950s with Cinderella. The ‘90s movies are often referred to as the Disney Renaissance, after over a decade of slow decline. In a way, however, Disney had its first renaissance following the wartime and post-war era films. While Megan and I still have one more film to watch, we’re getting even more excited to move out of this slump and finally get to the more memorable films, like Cinderella.
Verdict
Kevin: 2
Megan: 2
Final score: 2
