Get a Horse!

Get a Horse! is a 2013 American animated comedy short film produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios and directed by Lauren MacMullan.[4] Combining black-and-white hand-drawn animation and color[5] computer animation, the short features the characters of the late 1920s Mickey Mouse cartoons.

Get a Horse!
Theatrical release poster
Directed byLauren MacMullan[1]
Produced byDorothy McKim
Story byPaul Briggs
Nancy Kruse
Lauren MacMullan
Raymond S. Persi
Starring
Music byMark Watters
Animation byEric Goldberg (lead)
Adam Green (lead)
Layouts byAlfred "Tops" Cruz
Jean-Christophe Poulan
Color processColor, Black-and-white
Production
companies
Distributed byWalt Disney Studios
Motion Pictures
Release date
  • June 11, 2013 (2013-06-11) (Annecy)
  • November 27, 2013 (2013-11-27) (with Frozen)[2]
Running time
6 minutes[3]
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish

The film features archival recordings of Walt Disney in his posthumous role as Mickey Mouse. ("Goodbye, goodbye, little feller!" is an uncredited line by Jimmy MacDonald sourced from an archival recording.)[5][6] Disney's voice is also heard as Minnie Mouse in one instance (crying out "Help! Help! Help!"), though he is uncredited in that role.

It is the first original Mickey Mouse theatrical animated short since Runaway Brain (1995), and the first appearance of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit in a Disney animated production in 85 years.

Plot

Mickey Mouse walks from his house and spots Horace Horsecollar pulling a hay wagon with all his friends playing music. He hops on the wagon and helps up Minnie Mouse and Clarabelle Cow (who jumped on his leg) onto the wagon. Just then, Peg-Leg Pete shows up in his jalopy as his horn bellows in a high pitched voice, "Make way for the future!". Pete spots Minnie and gives her a flirty gaze, only for Mickey to put Clarabelle in the gaze in Minnie's place much to Pete's disgust and horror. Angry at being pranked, Pete kidnaps Minnie and rams his car into the wagon, sending Mickey and Horace flying toward the screen. Seeing Mickey and Horace bounce off the fabric, Pete hurls them even harder into the screen until they burst from their two-dimensional, black and white world to the three-dimensional, colorful and modern movie theater. As Pete taunts Mickey from inside the screen and closes the hole in the screen, Mickey tries to get back into his world, pulling back the curtains to reveal a wider screen. Horace then walks onto the stage wearing a Captain America T-shirt and sunglasses, as well as carrying an iPhone, a box of Milk Duds and a tub of popcorn. Mickey decides to use Horace as a mock biplane to fly around the theater and fire at Pete with the Milk Duds. When they crash land onto the stage, Mickey immediate sees and finds the iPhone Horace brought (and apparently stole since someone called him and said, "Give me back my phone!") onto the stage, so he calls Pete on his candlestick phone and Horace sprays foam from a fire extinguisher into the stolen phone and out from Pete's phone after he says "YEAH?" when he picks up.

Pete's car then lands in a frozen lake and the screen fills with water, giving Mickey the idea to poke a hole in the screen with his tail and let the water leak out, causing Pete, Minnie and the other cartoon animals to flood out onto the stage. Minnie is unsure about the new area, asking Mickey if they've landed in Poughkeepsie. Mickey and Minnie's reunion is short-lived, however, as Pete gives chase to the characters in and out of the screen until he grabs Minnie again, hits Mickey with his car onto a support beam and nails the screen shut. Horace and the others work together to swing from the beam and try to break through the screen like a wrecking ball, but end up flipping the screen upside-down, causing Pete to fall from the ground.

Mickey and the others flip it again and Pete lands on the ground, his car crashing down on him. Getting an idea, Minnie encourages Mickey to flip the screen again, this time having Pete land on a cactus, which sets off a chain of events. First, Pete gets an electrical shock on some telephone cables, then he has his face get hit by all the steps on a ladder, lands face first in the mud, and gets his rear end poked on a pitchfork, and falls onto a seesaw, where he gets hit on the head by numerous tools. Then one of the tools, a sledgehammer, rams the pitchfork deeper into his rear end. Finally, the sledgehammer falls on the opposite side of the seesaw, where Pete is launched, also making the pitchfork fly off of his rear, and lands face-first in his jalopy.

Horace, Mickey, and Minnie begin to laugh hysterically at Pete's pain. Suddenly, Horace's hand gets stuck behind the screen due to him pounding the screen. Mickey tries to pull him out, but only succeeds by spinning the screen horizontally like a flip-book. To Mickey's realization, it rewinds the scene. Seeing this as an opportunity, Mickey and Horace begin spinning the screen until Pete is completely dazed and knocked out.

Minnie then drives Pete's car with Pete in tow and completely tears the screen down, revealing the black-and-white world in color for the first time. With Pete continued to be knocked out, Mickey and his friends enter their world again and dance for a moment while Oswald the Lucky Rabbit briefly peeks out from the side of the screen. The horn that was on Pete's car tells an unconscious Pete, "Ah, get a horse!", before Mickey and his friends bring down a new screen, then Mickey waves goodbye to Pete and the audience, and he and Minnie are about to kiss, but instead kiss Horace on the cheeks, causing him to blush. As the iris closes, Pete, who has woken up by now, tries to get back in through the screen, only to get his head (and half his body) stuck. Seconds later, the flap on Pete's pants open up to reveal the words "THE END" and Pete bellows "Hey!!", as the screen cuts to the credits. After the credits, the Walt Disney Pictures logo is in black-and-white, and Clarabelle jumps over the castle, making the arch with her milk.

Cast

Additional voices

Production

Get a Horse! was conceived and directed by Lauren MacMullan, who became the first woman to solo direct a Disney animated film.[5][10] She started working on the short after Wreck-It Ralph director, Rich Moore, told her that Disney was looking for some Mickey Mouse ideas for television. Being fond of the earliest Mickey Mouse shorts, mostly because of their simplicity and freshness, she opted for a style resembling the 1920s animation.[11] Produced in a year and 6 months, its hand-drawn animation was supervised by Eric Goldberg, and its computer animation by Adam Green.[1] To achieve the 1928 look, aging and blur filters were added to the image, while for the CG part, they created new models, faithful to the character designs of 1928.[8] The look of Pete's clothing and car were inspired by his design in the 1929 short The Barn Dance.[12]

Originally temporary, the production team incorporated archival recordings of Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse voice from 1928 to 1946, and spliced it into the character's dialogue.[13] However, they did not find recordings of the word "red", so the crew took three sounds, a "rrr", a "ehh", and a "duh" from Disney's recordings and spliced them together.[13]

Get a Horse! would become the last short film where Minnie Mouse would be voiced by Russi Taylor, almost six years before her passing on July 25, 2019.[14]

Release

Get a Horse! premiered June 11, 2013 at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival in Annecy, France.[15] It made its United States premiere on August 9, 2013, at the D23 Expo in Anaheim, California,[16] and theatrically accompanied Walt Disney Animation Studios' Frozen, which was released on November 27, 2013.[2]

"Get a Horse!" is currently presented as part of the Disney-Pixar Short Film Festival attraction at Disney's Epcot theme park in Orlando, Florida, where it is presented in digital 3-D along with two other short films.[17]

Home media

Get a Horse! made its home debut on the Blu-ray and DVD release of Frozen on March 18, 2014.[18] It was later released on the Walt Disney Animation Studios Short Films Collection Blu-ray on August 18, 2015.[19] The short was re-released on Blu-ray/DVD/Digital on the Celebrating Mickey compilation, released October 23, 2018.

Critical response

Todd McCarthy of The Hollywood Reporter lauded the short film as "one of the wittiest and most inventive animated shorts in a long time". He particularly points out that the film "begins as an early black-and-white Mickey Mouse cartoon but then bursts its boundaries into color and 3D in marvelously antic ways that call to mind the stepping-off-the-screen techniques of Buster Keaton's Sherlock Jr. and Woody Allen's The Purple Rose of Cairo. It's a total winner."[20] Scott Foundas of Variety agreed, labeling the film as "utterly dazzling".[21] Drew McWeeny of HitFix lauded it as "the perfect companion piece" and "enormously entertaining". He continues on that "Filmmaker Lauren MacMullan perfectly nails the look and feel of the early days of the Disney studio, and it is the first time I have ever laughed out loud at Mickey Mouse. It's an inventive and technically precise short, and it also celebrates and deconstructs Disney's animated history in a very fun way."[22]

Accolades
Award Date of ceremony Category Recipients Result
Academy Awards[23] March 2, 2014 Best Animated Short Film Lauren MacMullan & Dorothy McKim Nominated
Annie Award[24] February 1, 2014 Best Animated Short Subject Lauren MacMullan Won
San Diego Film Critics Society[25] December 11, 2013 Best Animated Film Get a Horse! Nominated

See also

References
  1. Sarto, Dan (June 17, 2013). "Get A Horse – A New Mickey Mouse Short 85 Years in the Making". Animated World Network. Retrieved June 22, 2013.
  2. Tapley, Kristopher (June 6, 2013). "With Saving Mr. Banks and Mickey Mouse short Get a Horse, could it be a very Disney Oscars?". Hitfix. Retrieved July 31, 2013.
  3. Hammond, Pete (September 2, 2013). "Telluride: 'Gravity' Dazzles Fest Audiences So How Is Mickey Mouse Stealing The Show?". Deadline. Retrieved September 3, 2013.
  4. Bahr, Lindsey (August 9, 2013). "Disney Animation preview: Frozen, Big Hero 6, at Disney's D23, Plus Zootopia announced". Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved August 9, 2013.
  5. Breznican, Anthony (August 22, 2013). "Old-school Mickey Mouse gets future shock in Get a Horse! – First Look". Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved August 22, 2013.
  6. Keegan, Rebecca (April 23, 2013). "Walt Disney Animation releases new Mickey Mouse short". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved April 28, 2013.
  7. Eagen, Daniel (November 21, 2013). "Film Review: Frozen". FilmJournal International. Archived from the original on December 3, 2013. Retrieved November 28, 2013.
  8. Beck, Jerry (June 13, 2013). "First Peek: Get A Horse Premieres At Annecy". Animation Scoop. Archived from the original on June 18, 2013. Retrieved June 22, 2013.
  9. Breznican, Anthony (February 26, 2014). "10 secrets of Disney's Oscar-nominated short Get a Horse! – Exclusive Video". EW.com. Retrieved February 26, 2014.
  10. Keegan, Rebecca (November 22, 2013). "Frozen, Get a Horse! female directors mark firsts for Disney". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved March 5, 2014.
  11. Sharkey, Betsy (November 27, 2013). "Zany Disney short sizes up 3-D battle in animated Get a Horse!". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved March 5, 2014.
  12. Grob, Gijs (2018). Mickey's Movies: The Theatrical Films of Mickey Mouse. Theme Park Press. ISBN 1683901231.
  13. Murphy, Mekado (November 26, 2013). "Resurrecting His Master's Mouse Voice". The New York Times. Retrieved November 27, 2013.
  14. Alsup, Blake. "Russi Taylor, longtime voice of Minnie Mouse, dead at 75". nydailynews.com. Retrieved August 3, 2019.
  15. Breznican, Anthony (April 23, 2013). "Mickey Mouse returns in old-school Get a Horse short – First Look". Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved May 6, 2013.
  16. "D23 Expo: New Art From the Upcoming Disney, Pixar and Disneytoon Movies". ComingSoon.net. August 9, 2013. Retrieved August 10, 2013.
  17. "Disney & Pixar Short Film Festival Reopens Today at Epcot With Two New Shorts". Orlando ParkStop. June 19, 2017. Retrieved March 4, 2019.
  18. "Frozen Blu-ray set for March 18". Hi-Def Ninja. January 10, 2014. Retrieved January 10, 2014.
  19. Doty, Meriah (June 4, 2015). "'Frozen Fever' (and Easter Eggs!) Coming Soon on Disney Shorts Blu-ray (Exclusive)". Yahoo! Movies. Retrieved June 4, 2015.
  20. McCarthy, Todd (October 24, 2013). "Frozen: Film Review". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved November 3, 2013.
  21. Foundas, Scott (November 3, 2013). "Film Review: Frozen". Variety. Retrieved November 3, 2013.
  22. McWeeny, Drew (November 18, 2013). "Review: Frozen is a classic Disney musical told on a grand and beautiful scale". HitFix. Retrieved November 22, 2013.
  23. "2014 Oscar Nominations". Oscars.com. January 16, 2013. Archived from the original on January 10, 2013. Retrieved 16 January 2013.
  24. "Complete list of 2013 Annie Award nominees for animation". Los Angeles Times. December 2, 2013. Retrieved December 3, 2013.
  25. Stone, Sasha (December 10, 2013). "San Diego Film Critics". Awards Daily. Retrieved December 11, 2013.
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