#8 Make Mine Music

Title: Make Mine Music

Release Date: August 15th, 1946

Voice Cast: Nelson Eddy, Sterling Holloway, Jerry Colonna, The Andrew Sisters

Plot: The third of six Disney package films released in the 1940s, Make Mine Music is composed (pun intended) of ten theatrical animated shorts all set to a variety of music.

Review: I have to admit, I was a bit skeptical going into this film; aw, hell, I thought I would absolutely hate it. I sensed that after Saludos Amigos and The Three Caballeros, Disney would continue with the same dreadful pattern for all of its package films. And I'll tell you now, I was wrong.

Just like The Three Caballeros, Make Mine Music has a promising opening. It drops the narrators, and it replaces them with singers. The first short is a bouncy bluegrass tale of a Hatfield-McCoy-like feud, wildly entertaining. The second takes an artsy form; soft singing over nothing more than a colorful setting.

This is the pattern that pretty much reigns over the entirety of the film. It oscillates between two types of shorts. The first type involves upbeat, frantic, and merry stories set to music just as hippety to fit. These shorts included a musical "Casey At The Bat" and "Peter and the Wolf", as well as an original story about an opera-singing whale. The second type involves (usually) slow, romantic, colorful montages with beautiful love songs to accompany job. And while I would take the first category over the second any day, Disney did a fantastic job representing both.

There's really not much else to say about this one. I feel most people probably haven't seen it; but, I'm tellin' ya that you'll be surprised at how Make Mine Music flew under the "classic status" radar.

Under the Sea (Darling, It's Better...)