#obviously I thoguht it was okay enough to tolerate

[the-east-art]

anyway I didn't enjoy Nier Automata nearly as much as I thought I would. The grief and loss felt in the last act of the game at first pushed me to forward, but eventually I felt like it stopped having any meaning to the narrative, that it was loss for the sake of loss. At the end these characters have nothing to fight for. However the narrative to me didn't feel like it spent time dealing with that. I'm okay with a story circling around the concept of what to fight for when all is gone, but I don't actually see the characters themselves struggle with this in a conclusive way. Ending C definitely deals with this the best, indicating that 9S is left unmoored from a purpose and lays down his sword. But for the most part a lot of conclusive meanings to be drawn from the overall narrative just feels more coincidental. Like Nier Automata had a lot of cool ideas without really knowing what it wanted to say about them. I actually enjoy ending A and B the most, ending on a hopeful note on the future between these two, ultimately the same, factions. With the concept of 9S living in a robot body going forward. I don't mind a good tragic story, but Nier Automata made me feel overall like 'damn if all that happened would that be sad and fucked up or what?'

[popculturebuffet]

Goof Week: Goofy Birthday Shortstacular!

Hyuck all you happy people! And HAPPY BIRTHDAY GOOFY! The celebration already got on track today with a look at the two part goof troop pilot. You can find that here.  

That review kicked off GOOF WEEK my weeklong look at all things Goofy, but as is tradition on this blog the birthday of one of the big three wouldn’t’t be complete without a look at their theatrical shorts career. And with this one i’ve covered all three of Disney’s biggest stars having covered Donald last june (and will again next month) and Mickey in September so it’s long overdue that my boy gets a shot and even longer overdue I watched some of his classic shorts. 

A large part of why I started doing these is because I love classic theatrical shorts and the reason I love looking at the Disney ones is, unlike Looney Toons or Tom and Jerry, I didn’t grow up with these and Disney never replayed them. At most you’d get one or a small slice of one in a House of Mouse episode. So this is a fun way to dive right into history and see a piece of Disney I’ve only started scratching the surface of. 

This is a fun one too. I ended bumping this up to 12 shorts again, and i’m glad as it allowed me to take a look at some of the weirder stuff and we go all over the place: We have dancing, goofy begging for a smoke, goofy devlopnig a split personality that calls him fat a bunch, a prototypical max who is a LOT, trips to medevil times and cowboy times, a tex avery esque noir short, and the lead in short to National treasure. If any of that sounds like a real good time to you, then keep reading under the cut!

Mickey’s Revue (1933)

Goofy was created by his VA Pinto Colvig, who based the character on the local happy go lucky moron from his home town, and after a dicussion with Walt it was decided to roll him into Mickey’s growing supporting cast. 

My guess from here is they decided to do a dry run to make sure the character worked with audeinces before giving him a full time roll. Given Goofy’s been both a staple of Mickey’s supporting cast and often more popular than the mouse or even the duck, you can see how that went. 

Colvig was awesome. While Bill Farmer is my preferred Goofy, I still tip my hat to the original and it’s clear this was a character he was born t play and it shows: a lot of characters take a short or too to really find their personality. Goofy.. has his early shorts persona straight out of the box> The only weird thing is he’s an ol dman here.. but otherwise his schick here, loudly eating peanuts, laughing a bit too loud and annoying everyone around him with no genuine malice.. that’s Goofy and Pinto really hit onto something and as we’ll see today had a TON of range beyond this. 

As for the rest of the short.. it’s forgetable. It’s not BAD, but it’s just Mickey and friends capering on stage. Nothing really out of the oridnary for these early Mickey Shorts, especially since some of them could get really damn creative.

The Whoopee Party (1933)

Now we have Goofy’s first proper appearance, going from joke character in the crowd to full member of Mickey’s friend group. 

This one is also just okay, but better than the last: Mickey and friends throw a wild party, with Mickey, Goofy and Horace making the sammiches. Goofy dosen’t do much btu gets a good gag or two, and overall it’s alright. Enjoyabl efor it’s lively animation and not much else. 

Goofy and Wilbur (1936) Three years later we get Goofy’s proper debut, a cute short about him using his Cricket friend to fish. That’s not the exestitnal nightmare that it sounds like mind you as Wilbur simply tricks them into Goofy’s net an donly gets eaten when they catch on and Goofy runs to his aid. The short really is more about Wilbur but it’s fair: like with Donald , who was paired with Pluto in his first solo short, they wanted to test the waters before having Goofy carry a cartoon himself. As we’ll see he very well could, but it’s fair to want ot backdor pilot it first and it’s easily one of the best shorts of today’s batch.

How to Play Baseball (1937)

First off while they make a good effort I already know how ot play baseball short...

How To Play Baseball is my faviorite of the Goofy Shorts on Disney Plus, which is a VERY small batch. Especailly since most of Today’s shorts aren’t at all problematic or inapproriate for kids. This one is a gem though. It’s one of the How To Shorts where a narrator goes ove rgoofy trying and failing at an activity though this one’s a tad diffrent. 

 The How To Narrator teaches us about baseball before narrating the world series game. It’s full of cleve slapstick, high speed animation and plain fun. It’s also part of the trend that would dominate Goofy’s sports career of putting him in whatever roll the shorts needed. Here he’s everyone at once, others he’s his old goofy self, other time sh’es just a normal joe. But Colvig does every version amazingly, so it all meshes and that general goofy design is so appealing it just WORKS.  So yeah while i’m not into sports I do genuinely love the How To shorts, as they were my faviorite part of House of Mouse and still are, and the originals are every bit as classic as their reputation says they are. 

A Knight For A Day (1946)

This one is the only other one of these on Disney Plus and it’s decent enough. Nothing incredibble or extra specail: Goofy plays a Squire who has to fil lin for his Knight in a tournament and tries to win a princesses hand against another douchier goofy. Simple stuff iwth some fun gags, but it just dosen’t feel all that fresh, especially since Disney already did a much better shorts with knights with Mickey’s “Ye Olden Days”. It just dosen’t feel as fun or creative as that one was btu on it’s own it’s fine. Nothing great, nothing terrible, just fine. First short of the day to feature Goofy’s faceless blonde love interest who in domestic shorts is his wife and by the same extension Max’s now dead mother. 

Tomorrow We Diet (1951)

We’ve got three from 1951 here. By this point Goofy had traditioned from lovable bumbler to every man, taking on a more generalized personality to fit into every day slice of life scenarios, using those to brilliantly contrast the goofy animated comedy with the more mundane setting it comes from. And sometimes it’s just straight up sticom humor with the ocasoinal joke you could only do in a cartoon.  And sometimes.. you get a version of Goofy who lives in a mirror taunting Goofy over being fat and then trying to keep him on his diet while it’s not clear if thi sis a split personality, a mirror ghost tormenting him that took his form and is doing this so Goofy breaks the mirror and frees him, or his evil doppleganger from another universe. 

Yeah .. one of the centerpieces of this short is Goofy’s reflection/split personality/earth 3 doppleganger/some sort of evil genie taunt shim abotu the fact he’s putting on weight startnig by saying “Hey Fat”... because apparently in this unvierse the best weight joke they can come up with is literally just calling someone fat. I bet I know who rules THIS timeline with an iron fist....

The first half of this short is Goofy being told he’s fat by a bunch of people and the second half is his hallucination/psychotic break/guardian asshole tormenting him with the diet. And I do mean tormenting: He knocks away all of Goofy’s food, then suggests he not even eat his carrot and STARVE himself, which is just deeply unhealthy, and earlier forces Goofy to let him read his book and then tell shim to just diet anyway. Which granted dieting IS sensible.

So yeah this short as you can probably guess by the fact it involves the term “Hey Fat” which was only said by a human being once.. Dick Kinney or Mick Shaffer, the writers of ths short,  when one pitched the line to the other and they laughed for some reason and put it in the script. But with that you can wager this short is REALLY outdated> Overating CAN be a problem and fat shaming still exists, but it’s far less tolerated and far less of a thing.

And hell I can tolerate a good natured weight joke, the Critic had some great ones, especially as a fat guy myself... but this isn’t good natured. The entire joke is, as the man said above HE’S FAT.. So as a legit short. it’s deeply unfunny at best, horribly insulting at worst. But as a so bad it’s good short? it’s GOLD. From the whole mirror goofy thing, to the fact fat is seen as a legit insult here or something to just call fat people because that’s what the writers thoguht humans, even in the 50′s talked like it’s just riffably cruel.. though it will obviously depend onthe viewers tolerance for both fat jokes and how creepy the short can be and again as a short it sucks. As something to be mocked for fun.. it’s fat with potential

Father’s Are People (1951)

Hey Kids you wanna see Max and Goofy reenact Problem Child? 

Given I did Goof Troop earlier this week and i’m finishing this week with A Goofy Movie, it shouldn’t come as a huge shocker that I wanted to cover the first short with Goofy’s son Juinor, who’d later be remolded into Max. 

The short STARTS promising with Goofy having a kid and the hyjinks that comes from having a baby child: Goofy passes out Cigars because Lung Cancer was the preferred way of celebrating having a child in the 50′s, runs himself ragid helping out, which I give the short credit for as “Donald’s Diary” three years later would play a man helping a woman around the house for horror. Here George (Goofy would often go by George Geef in later shorts) pitches in and while he’s clearly exausted he is trying to help with the boy. 

It takes a turn though once we jump ahead to a toddler Junior. Seriously a red head named junior... there’s no way that’s a coincidence. Anyways, the problem is unlike problem child, where Junor dosen’t really go after his dad but the assholes around his pushover dad who genuinely deserve it, this Junior goes after Goofy who at wors tis mildly negelectful but clearly loves his boy> He also DOES try to take a brus hto the kid... but it’s hard to be too mad about that as it was acceptable at the time and he dosen’t actually paddle a three year old. It’s like a less horrfying version of donald puttin ga penguin to a shotguns face in that the targeted party dosen’t see the threat and that goofy isn’t some form of sociopath in this short like Donald was there. It’s just not very funny and only worth watching at all for the historical value. 

No Smoking! (1951) (Patreon Selection by WeirdKev27)

This is my first of two Patreon selections, my patreon is here if you want to chip in a buck to pick a short for Donald’s birthday next month, by longtime friend and backer of the blog Kev. He suggested this one for the sheer absurdity of Goofy smooking.. and was right on the money> This one is DELGITHFUL. 

It works on two levels: it works on the modern level of seeing such an iconic cartoon grapple with trying to quit smoking, first smoknig so constantly a giant cloud appears over him and he has about 80 cigs in his mouth at once, but then trying to quit and being surrounded bycigs before finally DESPERATELY begging for one. As I discovered you really HAVEN’T lived till you’ve heard goofy madly call out “Smoke, smoke gotta have a smoke”. 

But while the novelty IS great.. it’s also just a good cartoon. Outside of some blatant racisim at the start, with a native american sterotype introducing smoking to colmbus which feels so wrong to type I need a shower and really puts a damper on the short which after that.. is just really funny. From the smoking through the ages, to the very creative smoking gags it’s just fun.. and it is CLEARLY anti-smoking, showing both the insane amount of cigrte smoker can go through and how mad the addiction can drive you. It’s not bad... though if you can’t stomach the blatant and terrible racisim.. I get that and it’s fair. 

Two Gun Goofy (1952)

This is one of two “put Goofy in another setting all together” pieces, both in the same year which tells me they were trying to find new stuff to do for Goofy. Thi sisn’t unheard of in cartoons: Around the same time and before Bugs Bunny went all over the world and thorugh time and space, and Mickey went through the looking glass and had two fantasy shorts, so i’ts not unusual

But what IS neat about these next two shorts is they combined the two goofys: he has his goofy demanor and oblivoiusness from the classic shorts, but still has his deeper, slightly less goofy voice from the everyman shorts and is still treated as an average joe, just one now undertaking genre careers, here a cowboy and next a detective

This short is decent. I’m a sucker for cowboy episodes apparently: either old west style showdowns or having the characters go to a dude ranch or something. So naturally I picked this one and was told Max was in it an dhe is... in a two second cameo when Goofy has a thought bubble after meeting faceless lady.

But this is a really enjoyable picture. not Disne’y sbest but good stuff. It also pairs Goofy with pete which really is a perfect pairing, putting our scowling rotund villian against our skinny well meaning hero. And while i’ts a common gag in a lto of things I do love Goofy accidently beating the shit out of pete as the short finds fun ways to do it. All in all worth a watch. 

How to Be a Detective (1952)

This one was a REALLY fun one. Like with westerns i’m a sucker for a good noir parody, even if ironically I haven’t watched much of either genre proper. Add in the fact this is clearly inspiried by Tex Avery’s work and i’m sold on this fun madcap romp with an approraitely more noirsh narrator. 

Goofy is naturally a detective and hired by the faceless woman to find “Al” having to contend with both a goon he keeps failing to recognize and The Chief of Police, played by Pete, who keeps telling him “I told ya to stay off the case Goof!”. It’s just the delivery makes it funny any time he says it as does his instance... and the punchline, which I won’t spoil to both that an dthe overaching mystery i sa gem. This one’s on youtube, seek it out, it’s damn fun. Before I go thoguh I also love how Goofy is Given “Goof Balls”. Yes GOOFY GETS DRUGGED and I am here for it

Father’s Day Out (1953)

I couldn’t find any GIF’s for this one, not even one’s in teh same tag that were unrelated so here, have more smoking Goofy. It will never not be funny.

This one is ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhtastic. Goofy is overworked, wnats to rest on his weeknd, and stuff gets in the way. Oh and halfway through he abrubtly has to take Max to the beach. It’s.. not much honestly. It’s like the simpsons if it wasn’t funny. 

How To Hook Up Your Home Theater (2007) (Emma Fici Patreon Selection)

You may notice the MASSIVE time jump here. That’s because while Disney still does theatrical shorts nowadays, in part because Pixar’s shorts turned out to be a huge hit, they almost never use the classic cast. This delightful anamoly is one of the few exceptions and was picked by Emma out of sheer curosity. And she picked well this short is fun, feelnig like a big budget version of the House of Mouse How To Shorts I loved so an dhaving a modern yet still ultimatley timeless subject: while the tech featured is missin ga streaming box and 4k, otherwise it really has aged incredibly well and getting all the diffrent modes set up and what not is a hassel we al lcan agree with. 

It’s a fun short with lots of good gags and humor as Goofy tries to set up his Home Theater before the big game, and worth a watch. Weirdly not on Disney+ though try explaining that one. 

One final note is for whatever reason this was paired up with National Treasure: Book of Secrets. 

My BEST GUESS i sthat it appeals to the kinds of dads who’d watch National Traesure: Book of Secrets as well as kids since it’s an adventure film. Though it now makes me want to see Nicholas Cage voice goofy. Get on it Disney. Not forever though, Bill’s a treasure. Just for a gag like Don Cheadle vocing Donald.. oh god put them together.. and then have them do a movie together I don’t think they have and do not know why. 

Final Ranking: As a bit of added fun to close this out and as a new feature for these i’m ranking today’s shorts from best to worst How To Be A Detective How To Play Baseball No Smoking Goofy and WIlbur How To Hook Up Your Home Theater Two Gun Goofy The Whoopee Party Mickey’s Revue Tommorow We Diet A Knight for A Day Father’s Are People Father’s Weekend

For the record despite not being a GOOD short Tommorow we diet is at least intresting, hence i’ts ranknig while Father’s weekend is just a boring 50′s version of problem child. Fathers are People at least has some good gags to set it off. 

So thank you for reading and if you liked this review give it a like and consider joining my patreon at patreon.com/popculturebuffet. As a patron you’d get access to exclusive reviews, the patreon’s discord and to pick a short each time I do one of these shortstaculars. Donald’s comnig next month and the deadline is in only a few days to join up for said month so the clock is ticking. Even a dollar a month helps me reach my stretch goals so please i fyou can sign up today and if not, I understand and i’ll see you at the next rainbow