Simply Perfect

Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

They clearly tried to capture lightning in a bottle twice here. "Fantasia" was great, it was revolutionary for it's time and it still stands up to this day. This on the other hand is just forgettable. Some of the shorts are OK, but the majority of them just exist. The same goes for the music as well. I don't think comparing this to "Fantasia" is out of order either, they both follow the same structure. While "Fantasia" had well known/engaging music, this has music that just drags on because a lot of the shorts don't have stories. It feels like they took a bunch of random songs and added animation to them, compared to "Fantasia" where the animation actually matched the music. The animation's the best part of this, just stick to "Fantasia".

In 1946 the war was over, but Disney was still forced to tide things over because they hadn't had any chances to produce new material during the war years. And thus we get a string of short film collections, of which this is arguably the first. And arguably also the worst.There are some good segments. Mostly the ones with a story. All the Cats Join In is a great, brief segment with some really great jazz tunes and lively animation style. Peter and the Wolf is a classic that has since been re-released numerous times, and for a reason. The animation style is great, the story lovable and as a whole it's a tight package. The Whale Who Wanted to Sing at the Met, the finishing segment, is also great in its own bombastic way. Personally I find it perhaps a bit unambitious, but it's a fun idea done well.There are also couple story segments that don't really grab you, like Casey at the Bat, a baseball story, and Johnnie Fedora and Alice Bluebonnet, a hat love story, which are both animated well but lack a captivating storyline. And then there's The Martins and the Coys, where two hillbilly families duke it out until love enters the picture... and even then there's some roughhousing. Originally the opening segment, it has since been censored from many versions. Which is a shame, because it's easily the funniest of the segments.But then there are the music segments, which make up about half of the segments, which basically just try to copy Fantasia, but lack the right music and animation talent. Instead they're meandering, boring and overly long in every way.Make Mine Music is an interesting film to watch once, but it's not a movie I would see myself watching again. It has some good segments, though none which I'd call great, but on the average it's lacking in direction and vision.

Unable to initially return to making true animated features like "Pinocchio" and "Bambi" after the Second World War, Disney turned to making "package features". Like "Fantasia", these films strung together various shorts and featurettes into a feature-length anthology. Between their release in the 1940s and the DVD age, these films were rarely, if ever, shown in their entirety. Instead, the individual segments were re-released as stand-alone pieces, some of which became quite popular. It's understandable why this was done. Whereas the individual elements of "Fantasia" have a similar enough artistic vision to be kept intact as a single experience, the package features do seem like a line of random, individual shorts that have been strung together. As such, the films can seem quite uneven and somewhat unsatisfying collectively.In particular, "Make Mine Music" stands out as being one of the most inconsistent package features. It consists of ten shorts, all relying heavily on music. Some of the shorts are fairly conventional, story-driven, while others are quite experimental. The real stand-out pieces are "Peter and the Wolf" (initially considered for a sequel/continuation of "Fantasia") and "The Whale Who Wanted to Sing at the Met". The stories are engaging, and they are absolutely charming, although "Peter and the Wolf" relies a bit too much on narration. It comes as no surprise that these two shorts became the film's most famous segments. Special mention should also be given to "Blue Bayou", which uses footage from a deleted segment of "Fantasia" that was to be set to Debussy's "Clair de Lune" (here, though, it's set to a love ballad).Other segments, however, vary. "The Martins and the Coys", which was rather stupidly removed from the American DVD, is not bad but hardly memorable. "After You've Gone", an interlude featuring anthropomorphised musical instruments, means well but falls quite flat, ultimately appearing as not much more than filler. "All the Cats Join In" and "Without You" equally seem like experimental filler, yet both are more successful. "Casey at the Bat", on the other hand, contains too many self-indulgent gags and overly caricatured animation to be of any real artistic or entertainment merit, a fact not helped by Jerry Colona's obnoxious narration. The two other segments, "Johnny Fedora and Alice Bluebonnet" and "Two Silhouettes", are so cutesy that they become nothing but pieces of unadulterated kitsch.Ultimately, the only people I would recommend "Make Mine Music" to would be the people who would only be interested in it - Disney fans and animation buffs. To everyone else, as with a good number of package films, it would probably be best seeing individual segments, which is how these films work best.

Get your dancing shoes on and have fun with this 1946 Disney cartoon classic, "Make Mine Music."This movie contains ten animated segments for the original version, and nine for the DVD version (due to the first short being a little bit too...). Like all of the other Disney classics, these shorts are exceptionally outstanding!One short in particular: The Whale Who Wanted To Sing At The Met. I'm mentioning this short the most because this was seen on the old Disney Channel (before it got all "Raven-ed" up LOL) nine years ago from writing. Sure, it was long, but it made for a very interesting short. It may also not have Mickey and Minnie, but it's still worth watching!"Make Mine Music" is a good movie to watch if you are a little bit down and need to be all pepped up! Enjoy!10/10