Good start, but then it gets ruined

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

Blistering performances.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

A little odd cartoon featuring Mickey Mouse, in the first outing where he speaks, trying to impress Minnie the Shimmy Dancer with a serenade at a carnival. Some catchy music here and there, but not much funny stuff to see here. Just a lot of wacky singing and dancing. Grade C

Another of the classic Iwerks/Disney collaborations from Walt Disney productions is this short that, unlike some of the other cartoons that the duo put out in 28/29, actually takes places in two time periods. Sure, it may just be day and night, but that's a small leap forward in the storytelling for Disney, who would usually just make things set in "real" time, far as the continuity went. This is set at a carnival where Mickey Mouse is selling hot dogs - we hear his voice, not sounding really like the Mouse we'd know later, perhaps Disney wasn't sure yet how to do it, like the early Homer Simpson voice work - and Minnie Mouse wants one.The hot dogs, of course, have legs, and little arms, and can bite and be spanked when they're bad (!) so that's really the highlight here. The second half has Mickey trying to win Minnie over by having two cats "serenade" (really badly, of course) while he strums his guitar. The cat stuff goes on a bit too long - I might've liked actually full story with just the hot dogs, do they rebel, how can they eat the little cartoon hot dogs, oh, no wait, they're cartoons too, guess it makes sense - but it's still magical comedic stuff, genuine and just dumb-silly stuff.

From the very first shot of this animated short we know we're in Cartoon Dream World: the setting is a rowdy carnival in full swing, but our view of the festivities is blocked by swirling helium balloons. When the balloons drift away it's revealed that a cow is dangling from them, levitating over the crowd, grinning happily and blowing on a noise-maker that uncoils like a snake and emits a "Bronx cheer." Floating above a peanut vendor (who happens to be a pig), the cow razzes him with this device and scares him so badly that the pig leaps out of his clothes. Now clad in underwear, the angry porcine peanut vendor uses a sling-shot to burst the cow's balloons. The cow plummets to the ground but is cheerfully unaffected by the experience, which she demonstrates by turning to the camera and defiantly blowing a raspberry right in our faces. And that's just the first shot!It looks very much like something produced by the Fleischer Studio, and we expect to see Koko the Clown and Betty Boop pop up any second, but in fact this is a Disney cartoon dating from the earliest days of Mickey Mouse. The atmosphere sure is different from what we might expect, based on familiarity with Mickey's later, buttoned-down adventures in suburbia; this cartoon has a low-down attitude quite unlike Disney's later output. Here, Minnie Mouse is a midway dancer who makes like Little Egypt, while a monkey beats out a tattoo rhythm on bongos and the barker promises "she'll put you in a trance/with her hoochy-coochy dance." Mickey is a hot dog vendor who sasses the barker and tries to make time with Minnie. The Karnival Kid marked the first occasion when the Disney animators gave the Mouse dialog to speak, but it was made before Walt himself began supplying the voice. It's not the familiar innocent squeak, either; as befits the setting, Mickey's voice is a bit raspy, as you'd expect from a carny worker.There's a startling scene where Mickey sells Minnie a frankfurter, a scene that is far more suggestive what the Disney folks would tend to do later on. To pay for her purchase, Minnie reaches into her stocking for her money supply—which makes Mickey blush—but when she attempts to bite into the hot dog the thing suddenly comes to life, and attempts to escape. Mickey catches it, pulls down its "pants" and gives it a good spanking. (I'm not making this up!) The frankfurter pulls its pants back up, weeps with shame, then bites Mickey's finger and escapes again. And then, having no place else to go, our story culminates in a midnight serenade. Outside Minnie's trailer, under the moon, Mickey strums his guitar while two disreputable-looking cats yowl "Sweet Adeline" in weird, nasal tones. After this extended musical number the film wraps up with an anticlimactic gag, something quite unlike the neat resolutions we find in the Disney studio's mature work, and when the show is over you still feel like you've just watched a Fleischer cartoon.This short is historically significant because it's Mickey Mouse's first real "talkie," but in a larger sense it signifies the road not taken for its production house. If you ever wondered what Disney cartoons might have looked like if the animators had been more loony and naughty, more like the gang at the Fleischer Studio or WB's Termite Terrace, then take a look at The Karnival Kid. I don't believe the guys at Disney ever again designed such a seamy setting for a Mickey cartoon, but perhaps that's just as well.

A Walt Disney MICKEY MOUSE Cartoon.Mickey, THE KARNIVAL KID, woos Minnie the Shimmy Dancer.Full of the quirky humor of artist Ub Iwerks, this very enjoyable black & white film is a delight. Despite its age, the animation has an unexpected panache, with Mickey's hot dogs stealing the show. Look for an early cameo by Clarabelle Cow as the bovine attached to the balloon. Mickey's voice does not sound like Walt Disney this time.Walt Disney (1901-1966) was always intrigued by drawings. As a lad in Marceline, Missouri, he sketched farm animals on scraps of paper; later, as an ambulance driver in France during the First World War, he drew comic figures on the sides of his vehicle. Back in Kansas City, along with artist Ub Iwerks, Walt developed a primitive animation studio that provided animated commercials and tiny cartoons for the local movie theaters. Always the innovator, his ALICE IN CARTOONLAND series broke ground in placing a live figure in a cartoon universe. Business reversals sent Disney & Iwerks to Hollywood in 1923, where Walt's older brother Roy became his lifelong business manager & counselor. When a mildly successful series with Oswald The Lucky Rabbit was snatched away by the distributor, the character of Mickey Mouse sprung into Walt's imagination, ensuring Disney's immortality. The happy arrival of sound technology made Mickey's screen debut, STEAMBOAT WILLIE (1928), a tremendous audience success with its use of synchronized music. The SILLY SYMPHONIES soon appeared, and Walt's growing crew of marvelously talented animators were quickly conquering new territory with full color, illusions of depth and radical advancements in personality development, an arena in which Walt's genius was unbeatable. Mickey's feisty, naughty behavior had captured millions of fans, but he was soon to be joined by other animated companions: temperamental Donald Duck, intellectually-challenged Goofy and energetic Pluto. All this was in preparation for Walt's grandest dream - feature length animated films. Against a blizzard of doomsayers, Walt persevered and over the next decades delighted children of all ages with the adventures of Snow White, Pinocchio, Dumbo, Bambi & Peter Pan. Walt never forgot that his fortunes were all started by a mouse, or that childlike simplicity of message and lots of hard work always pay off.