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The alarm clock rings and Goofy awakes slowly but surely, which is completely the opposite of what the narrator is pointing out. Afterwhich, the narrator points out basic information on the undergarments, the skis, and the shoes. Goofy puts on his skis after he scratches his back. Keep in mind he is not fully dressed yet, but still he puts them on with the shoes, where is foot is squeezing inside very uncomfortably. Once again, Goofy goes by his patented self by going back to sleep after putting that on! Well, "now" the narrator yells to wake him up and Goofy proceeds to put on his sweater on (the Goofy way, of course). Goofy is mislead by the narrator and thinks he is completely dressed...oops, forgot about the trousers. He tries to put them on with the skis and pants on (please don't try this at home) and gets his legs and skis crossed as he tries to balance himself. Do I need to explain more?
There is a great pan shot of the mountains while the narrator reads a poem. After he is finished, we see Goofy relaxing on the ski lift as he takes in the thin, fresh air. Goofy falls off at the very end and gets "spanked" by the seats of the lift. Goofy then proceeds (well, tries) to show how you are supposed to position yourself as you prepare to go down the hill, as well as how to get up. Of course, Goofy is his clumsy self, getting every part of his body entangled, even in an upright position. He is certain to win a game of Twister that way.
As he prepares to ski down a very easy hill, he goes backwards as expected, nails a rock head first and lands with his head in one of the shoes, and hangs upside-down between two cliffs. As the narrator would say, "Skiing is really quite simple once you get the hang of it." Goofy then tries to ascend using a "herring" technique, leaving his skis imprinted in the snow. However, when Goofy continues to climb vertically, then upside down, he obviously falls, leaving his own body imprints behind.
As Goofy tries to change direction at high speed, he jumps but loses his skis and both cris-cross for a while until they get reacquainted in a self-made collision (yes, X does mark the spot). On a downhill run on a steep slope, Goofy skis extremely fast...and eventually crash-lands at the bottom of the mountain.
The slalom was no better for Goofy because he crashes into a tree, takes it with him, slams in the middle of a cliff, and does his Woody Woodpecker imitation after he loses the tree. Needless to say, Universal Pictures was not that impressed, since they created Woody Woodpecker a year earlier.
The final and most exciting part of the cartoon, the ski jump, has Goofy ready to leap as high as he could and land perfectly safe, which he does neither. He jumps so high that radar gets affected, loses his skis from his feet but hangs on to them for dear life, nearly nails mountain, goes through a puffy cloud, and finally nails a mountain with a cloud covering the summit.
The plane has crashed. Goofy (yes, he's the plane) twists, turns, and tumbles all the way down until he crashes into his own hotel room and his bed...in sleeping position! Needless to say (as what the narrator says at the end), after a vigorous day in the open, the skier never has any trouble falling to sleep.
I'm surprised he did not crash into a hospital bed after all that!
The hilarity begins from the very first shot of the film, when the book “The Art of Skiing” is shown on screen, and underneath it reads “Pronounced SHEE-ing.” I have never before and never since heard anyone pronounce it that way, but listening to John McLeish pronounce skiing that way is hilarious.
As always, the humor here is in seeing Goofy try to comply with the ways that the narrator is telling him to act, but completely lousing it up. I think this short does a better job of that than the previous ones. Goofy looks directly into the camera, as though listening, and attempts to make the correct move, only to fail miserably. It starts right from the beginning, when he tries to put on the skis.
One of my absolute favorite things from Goofy is the yodel/yell he unveils in this short. The “Waaa-hooooo” yell is one thing that makes me laugh every single time. It is frequently quoted around my house and something I never tire of, no matter how many times it is used in the Goofy shorts.
There's not much to talk about in this short, except that it's just fun. Sure, there's the pain of seeing Goofy crashing through things and falling down mountains, but that's part and parcel of the experience. It's also interesting how many different gags the animators came up with for this one idea.
There's the typical stuff (Goofy gets twisted around or goes down the wrong slope), but then there's also some more inventive ideas, such as Goofy flying through the air as he does a ski jump. He manages to get a hold of hte skis and turn them into wings, eventually crashing him through the window of his hotel and back to bed. It's a fun ending to a very funny and exciting Goofy short.