How sad is this?

This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Disney started producing the Silly Symphonies in the full 3-strip Technicolor in 1932, but the Mickey Mouse cartoons remained in black and white. This was because the Mickey Mouse cartoons were already so popular that Disney felt that the added cost was unnecessary. (I personally think some of the Black and White Shorts produced around this time could have benefited the use of Technicolor).Yet, in 1935 Disney decided to start producing the Mickey Mouse cartoons in Technicolor starting with The Band Concert. The use of color isn't particularly striking nor creative, but very bright. Granted, the studio was still perfecting its craft in all capacities. Mickey doesn't have any dialogue in this short, but its Donald that steals the show. Here Donald is more of a heckler and doesn't really showcase his short temper. The William Tell Overture segueing into Turkey In The Straw was a clever musical gag.This makes a milestone for Mickey Mouse. By the end of 1935, Disney stopped filming his cartoons in Black and White.

I try to picture myself as an audience member in the theater watching this for the very first time back in 1935. That had to be quite the experience, not only because it was Walt Disney's first Mickey Mouse cartoon in color, but the vibrancy and dynamic action make it a blast to watch even today. There's just so much going on when the picture first starts out that it's difficult to zero in on any one item, you just don't want to miss anything. As conductor Mickey gets the William Tell Overture under way, Donald Duck begins hawking ice cream, and then a busy bee starts to give Mickey fits. As a huge, black tornado breaks things up, the creativity of the cartoon artists really comes into play. As a fan, I found this to be a wonderful treat, certainly raising the bar for future Disney endeavors and other studios as well.

By the mid-1930s, Disney was hard at work pushing the boundaries of animation – as groundwork for his feature films, his 'Silly Symphonies' were becoming more sophisticated at creating characters with physical weight and substance, moving through increasingly realistic surroundings with plenty of nuance in their 'acting'. He was turning the old 'short subject' diversion into serious art.All this put his resident star Mickey Mouse into a curious spot – originally the bouncy, anarchic free spirit, now bound in his Technicolor debut to driving his rubber-limbed barnyard co-stars to higher purpose. As band leader, he does his level best to create high art, but is stymied by the very realism he seeks to embrace. His music stand buckles under gravity, his realistically weighty jacket hinders and trips him up…and against more realistic character design, his own facial features come into question. His trademark ears start to defy dimensional correctness to retain his distinct silhouette, and the free-floating pupils in his eyes show their limitations as he shoots sideways glares to his cowing orchestra.With all this to contend with, in walks Donald Duck. Created as a model of disreputable behavior in "The Wise Little Hen", he was quickly overtaking Mickey in the hearts of movie audiences. Even with a weightier, more realistic design (much more duck-like than he would later become) he cheerfully dismisses the new realism – with a wink to us he produces a seemingly infinite number of flutes from thin air! His breezy attitude easily infects the old-style band members, who quickly, repeatedly revert to their roots, veering off the 'William Tell Overture' into 'Turkey in the Straw' at Donald's lead.Mickey soldiers on regardless, squaring off against both his box-office rival and the intimidating weight of his newly-realistic surroundings, summed up in a full-blown storm that swirls him and his old cohorts into the sky like autumn leaves. Through sheer determination, he holds things together to a triumphant end, proving himself up to this new world he's in – but the Duck gets in the last laugh.(Note: It may be pompous over-analysis to take what is simply a cartoon that's a technical masterpiece, consistently funny, and understandable to anyone, anywhere, at any age, and hold it up as a metaphor for Disney's internal struggle between his lofty ambitions and his lowbrow roots, but that's what being a do-it-yourself internet reviewer is all about.)

In this, first color, Mickey Mouse short, he stars as a music conductor at a country fair. His band are playing, in the most average way, The William Tell overture. It gets worse though when Donald (playing a loudmouth ice-cream vendor) comes along and muscles in on the band with his flute, playing a bizarre alternate take on the music and causing the band to stray off course.Mickey gets mad (I like it when Mickey isn't always the clean-cut good guy) and tries his best to silence Donald. Once that's out the way a bee torments each and every band member, causing further collapse of Mickey's conducting. Once Mickey turns the page on his music script a rather difficult segment of music (called 'The Storm') is revealed. How appropriate, at that very moment a twister tears thru the countryside. The band are so lost in their performance that they don't even realize they're sucked up inside a tornado. It's the highlight of the cartoon, with some truly inventive animation and technically brilliant for it's day. Mickey doesn't actually say anything in this one but his facial expression do all the acting. Like I said, I like it when Mickey isn't always the opposite of Donald (IE not moody and easily frustrated) and this is their pairing here in this cartoon.