#plus I need to brainstorm ideas for mickey and the gang anyway

[space-bowl]

Ep 7 Aftermath (given the planet didn't explode yet)

Part 2

[asktailikku]

While I know that Thanksgiving is nearly a week and a half away, my local radio stations have decided to take the opportunity to play Christmas songs, with the big offender being FM 93.9 WLIT.

But rather than rant about how they are jumping the gun, I would like to take this opportunity to talk about two Disney holiday classics released on VHS and DVD on the this very day, five years apart from each other (eventually appearing on a 2-movie Blu-Ray), Mickey’s Once and Twice Upon a Christmas.

Please note that Mickey does not have such a candle in the film

Each of these films are a collection of stories starring Mickey and the gang, each dealing with the holiday hustle and bustle as well as the good warm feelings that make us feel merry.  The first one contains three stories while the second has five.

The first segment in Once Upon a Christmas is Donald Duck – Stuck on Christmas.  Despite his name being in the title, the story actually focusses on Huey, Dewey, and Louie.  As they spend Christmas Day, they are shocked to see it go by so quickly and wish upon the Evening Star for it to be Christmas every day.

I should bring up that the original “Christmas Every Day” story from 1892 was more of a what if scenario as if the year continued as normal, but every day was Christmas.  On paper this sounded like a good idea, to have it celebrated every day turns out to be a terrible idea as it ends up drying up the proper resources for Christmas.  By July in the story, people are more focussed on Christmas than they are the 4th of July.  And by autumn, people giving presents go from “Here you go, pal” to “Take this and f**k off!”  As it turned out, the endless Christmas celebration was nothing more than a dream.

Instead, the story borrows more from Groundhog Day starring Bill Murray.  In the film, Bill is stuck in a time loop that haunts him for what seems like centuries, waking up every morning on 2/2/1993.  Only until he undergoes some serious character development does he escape the loop.  In the Nephews’ case, this decades long loop serves as a punishment for them as they do not know the true meaning of Christmas.

It gets to a point where the boys have everything down and in what order, as follows:

Wake up

Open presents

Donald freaks out, drops breakfast on himself

Daisy, Scrooge, and “Aunt Gertie” (her only appearance) arrive

Go sledding

Eat dinner

Sing carols

Go to bed at 10:00 PM

Repeat the next day

Towards the end of the loops, the boys decide to spice things up, similar to Bill’s suicidal loops in the film.  First they ice bomb Chip’n’Dale as their Christmas morning reminder of them playing train was getting annoying.  Then they sent their RC car and plane after Donald before he sets foot in the living room.  When Gerty arrives for kisses, the boys arrive in scuba gear.  By dinner, the roasted turkey has been replaced with a live one, ticking Donald off, and wrecking the piano, cancelling carols.  After the turkey chase, the turkey ends up going up the chimney and in Santa’s outfit. It’s not so much the appearance of the turkey that’s hilarious, it’s the implication that Santa knew that the day was on repeat.  In an attempt to save face, the boys attempt to leave with their sleds, but then read the card that was attatched to one of them, a poem written by Scrooge about the true meaning of Christmas.  The next loop can be seen as something similar to Bill’s philanthropist loops in the film.

In this loop, the nephews use the Junior Woodchucks Guidebook to convert the sleds into a gift for Donald.  When morning comes, they give a bag of nuts to Chip’n’Dale.  They then make Donald breakfast and tell him that they need to wait until the family arrives.  By dinnertime, they eat ham instead of turkey, with the turkey eating with them.  The nephews then reveal their gift to Donald: a snowboat.  The loop ends with Donald and Daisy kissing under the mistletoe.

The next morning turns out to be Boxing Day as Donald wants to give his gift a try, only for it to fall apart as he goes down the hill.

The next segment is A Very Goofy Christmas, which is an original story with some elements of Miracle of 33rd Street and “Yes Virginia, There is a Santa Claus”.  Goofy and Max (in his very last appearance as a child) are writing letters to Santa and shoveling snow from their driveway and sidewalk.  Pete arrives and insists that “an old guy in a red suit cruising the whole world in one night using reindeer that fly” is practically impossible.  Despite this, Goofy wants to help his son beleive in Christmas magic and the spirit of Old St. Nick, as they have a Christmas Eve dinner with a neighboring poor family.  Dinner goes without a hitch, but then when Goofy tries to act as a department store Santa, things go haywire as Max feels betrayed.

Goofy decides that in order to cheer his son up, not just with Old Stuffed Bear, he’ll prove that Santa exists that night even if he has to stand out in the cold.  After two false alarms (a pug in jingle bells and Big Time Beagle attempting to rob from Pete), Goofy is the one that begins to doubt Santa’s existence and Max is the one that is willing to cheer him up, dressing as Santa like earlier that evening.  As Goofy follows his son up the chimney, they see Santa flying by and dropping Max’s gift into their hands.  Plus some well deserved Karma for Pete.  Max then decides to share his gift with one of the poor kids.

The final segment is a retelling of O. Henry’s classic tale of The Gift of the Magi.  In this version, Mickey has a harmonica without a case and Minnie has a pocket watch.  Both of them have the intention of getting a gift to compliment their treasure, a chain for the watch and a case for the harmonica.  Mickey’s job at Crazy Pete’s at first seems to be enough to get him the chain, but then when he helps a poor family with a smaller tree rather than a 10-ft Nova Scotia pine that Pete was trying to force upon them, Mickey’s paycheck is confiscated, but needless to say, karma bites Pete again as he accidentally sets his ten-footers ablaze.

On Minnie’s end, her job at Mortimer’s only ended with her getting a fruitcake from her tightwad of a boss (and this was the same Mortimer that has attempted being a casanova time and again, even if it means humiliating Mickey).  Back to Mickey, he participates in a toy drive held in the park to tide over until the Firehouse Five return from putting out the blaze at Crazy Pete’s.  The firecheif compliments Mickey’s harmonica skills and that its worth its weight in gold.  This gives Mickey the idea to trade his harmonica to get the chain.  With the chain in hand, Mickey and Minnie decide to open gifts, only to learn that they traded their treasures to get the other’s gift.

In my head canon, they receive a surprise visitor, the shopkeeper who gives them their original treasures back, claiming them to be new presents altogether.  This is partially based on versions of the story where the shopkeeper is the main character and oversees the exchanges between treasures and gifts, as seen on an episode of Sesame Street with Gordon playing this to Ernie and Bert.

The movie ends with Mickey and the gang singing a medley of carols (Jingle Bells, Deck the Halls, We Wish You a Merry Christmas).

The first segment on the second movie, now done in CG, is “Belles on Ice”.  This segment was partially inspired by Michelle Kwan’s performance at the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics and her performance as Mulan in “Reflections on Ice”.  The plot involves Minnie and Daisy having a figure skating duel that escalates out of control, with the two of them realizing that their egos got the best of them.  Original concepts for the segment included a parade float contest, a store window display competition and a cooking show bake-off.

The next segment is “Christmas: Impossible”  The segment begins with Scrooge having Donald, Daisy, and the Nephews over at his mansion (with its own zip-code) to celebrate the holidays.  On Christmas Eve, the nephews cause a ruckus, which leads to Scrooge talking to them about cleaning up their act if they ever want to get on Santa’s Nice List, of which he is not.

I should bring up that there was one thing he always wnated from Santa but never got: a set of bagpipes.

A little problem with that Mr. McDee, you made yourself a set before you emigrated from Scotland to America and even used it against Ma Beagle.  And of course these pipes predate the Number One Dime.

Anyways, with this plothole out of the way.

The nephews decide that the best way to get on the nice list is to head to Santa’s Workshop at the North Pole and write their names on it.  After finding the list room locked and getting the key from Santa’s office (the original script called for an ice cave with a hungry polar bear swimming about), they are about to head in there and set things right for themselves when they lose the key in a pile of fake keys belonging to a key themed toy

In when brainstorming ideas about the toy in question, the animators pitched at least ten ideas, nine of which are seen above.  My personal favorites being Key-to-My-Heart Kate, Dog Pound Pals, and Who-Dini the Owl.  The winner of the contest was Jailbreak Bob only because of Jeff Bennet’s demo reel as him (“Lemme out, see?”) proved to be the coolest.

One thing leads to another as the boys accidentally gum up the progress made by the elves, almost ruining Christmas, with the elves comparing this to the “Sleigh Crash of ’64”.  The nephews decide to help fix this mess and escape back to the list room, keyless (Santa took it back having assumed to have lost it), but end up sneaking into the list room behind the janitor.

Pulling up Duckburg on the monitors, they find that they are indeed not on the list, but instead write Scrooge’s name on there.  The next morning, they find tons of presents for them, including a Jailbreak Bob (“Be good this year, see?  And have a Merry Christmas!”), the Idiot’s Guide to Manners, and a new set of bagpipes for Scrooge, ending the segment with Santa sending a letter saying that “there’s always room on the Nice List for those who think of other first,” and Scrooge playing Deck the Halls on his new pipes, very badly.

The third segment is more or less a montage called “Christmas Maximus”.  This more or less follows Max (now in his 20’s) and his new girlfriend Mona, spending the holidays at Goofy’s after leaving from college, with Goofy trying hard not to embarass Max, and eventually strengthening the bond between the two of them.  In a rather interesting move, Mona is voiced by Kellie Martin, who voiced Roxanne in the original Goofy Movie.

Next is Donald’s Gift, and I can tell you one thing from listening to “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” over and over again.

Donald is not amused.  All he wants is some peace and quiet and a piping cup of hot chocolate.  Daisy and the nephes arrive to take them shopping at Mousy’s, but Donald doesn’t want any of it.  But he is forced to regardless.

Donald finds a cocoa stand and gets a big cup of it.  This is where things get wierd as every noise he hears throughout the department store is in sync to “We Wish You a Merry Christmas”, culminating in him ending up in the black-lit display window playing the same song.  In his rage, he destroys it but is shamed upon by his family and thrown out by security (“Fer cryin’ out loud, where’s yer Christmas spirit!”)

Trudging home, Donald comes across an uncoordinated group of carollers trying to sing the song.  Donald takes over conducting and together, they produce a beautiful harmony that draws in all the townsfolk.  Soon the crowd draws in Daisy and the boys, who see Donald finally showing some Christmas spirit. Donald apologizes and joins in on the singing, making sure to sing from his heart.

The final segment is Mickey’s Doggone Christmas.  In this story, Mickey is trying to set up a party with Pluto, but Pluto accidentally causes a powersurge which not only ruins the set up that Mickey had, but gets him sent to the dog house.  Mickey then heads out on his own to fix the damage in time for the party, all while dealing with a crazy snowplow truck.  Pluto decides that enough is enough and runs away, taking the next train behind his backyard.

The train ends up taking Pluto to the North Pole, where he sees Santa’s reindeer training for the big night.  The main two deer of the special are Dunder and Blitzen (voiced by Jeff Bennet and Jim Cummings respectively).  As Pluto is not wearing his collar, Dunder decides to adopt him as “Murray,” as in “Murry Christmas” *faceplam*

Mickey returns home to find that Pluto ran off and calls his friends to rally a search party.  “Murray” meanwhile is hacing fun with the team, but soon feels homesick.  Mickey meanwhile has been handing out fliers of his missing bloodhound, and soon takes his request up with a mall Santa, revealed to be the real deal and from “Christmas:  Impossible”.  Santa tells Dunder and Blitzen that Pluto is homesick, and is prepared to take him back to Mickey.

The movie ends with Mickey and Pluto reunited as the gang arrives in the snowplow truck.  As it happened, when Minnie heard Mickey’s call, she made calls to the rest of the gang, with Scrooge buying a snowplow company to aid in the search, Goofy happened to be the running gage snowplow.  All together, they sing the medley from the previous film as the film comes to a close.  This ending seems to imply that this was going to be the last part of an ongoing story where Mickey and Pluto were setting up for the party and each decoration brought up a different memory, leading into the stories.  This would also help explain why the “Angry Man” appears in each segment, as well as the elves and Dunder mentioning the Sleigh Crash of ’64.

All in all, despite what Rotten Tomatoes may think, these two movies are the perfect holiday experience for fans old and new as well as friends and family alike.

Mickey’s Nth Upon a Christmas While I know that Thanksgiving is nearly a week and a half away, my local radio stations have decided to take the opportunity to play Christmas songs, with the big offender being FM 93.9 WLIT.