Cumulative rating:	(2 ratings submitted)

Synopsis

Characters

Mickey Mouse (Voice: Walter Elias "Walt" Disney) Pluto

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Distributor(s)

United Artists

Mickey Mouse Tracks (Season 1, Episode 4)

Donald's Quack Attack (Season 1, Episode 59)

The Mickey Mouse Club (Season 1, Episode 37)

United States

Here's Mickey!

Germany

Hier ist Mickey

France

Salut Mickey

Italy

Topolino Superstar

Winny Puh a Tu Per Tu

Papaerino & C. Professione Buonomore

United States

Here's Mickey / Here's Pluto

Japan

Hello! Mickey

United States

Mickey Mouse in Living Color

Starring Mickey

Germany

Disney Treasures : Mickey Mouse in Living Color (Volume 1)

France

Disney Treasures : Mickey Mouse in Living Color (Volume 1)

Italy

Disney Treasures : Mickey Mouse in Living Color (Volume 1)

United Kingdom

Disney Treasures : Mickey Mouse in Living Color (Volume 1)

Sweden

Disney Treasures : Mickey Mouse in Living Color (Volume 1)

Canada

Classic Cartoon Favorites : Volume 1 : Starring Mickey

Netherlands / Belgium

Mickey Mouse In Living Color

Running Time: 8:48

Animation Type: Standard (Hand-drawn-Cel) Animation

Aspect Ratio: 1.37 : 1

Color Type: Technicolor

Sound Type: Mono: RCA Sound Recording

Print Type: 35mm

Negative Type: 35mm

Cinematographic Format: Spherical

Original Language: English

Original Country: United States

Reviews and Comments

From Jerry Edwards :

I've always enjoyed this cartoon for the inventive animation - but really hate the "it was all a dream" cartoons - this time caused by the insecticide.

From Ryan :

I had this short on a video at one time. I liked it, but didn't really understand the humor in it such as the scene where the bugs drink the insecticide and get drunk. I haven't seen this short for a few years and can hardly remember much of it.

From Rich :

On a scale of 1-10, I think this short deserves a 9. The gags in this short are perfect especially on where the bugs swarm around a potato with eyes in it and gobble it up leaving loose blinking eyeballs rolling around in the dirt. I also found the parts where Pluto gets his head stuck in the pumpkin and in the belly of an ailing lighting bug all the more amusing. Though this cartoon seems to have a theme of drunkenness it sets a very good example of how the best gags can be written, especially in your own backyard!

From Baruch Weiss :

I enjoyed this short. It's good for the young Disney fan because of the way the bugs act after they drink the stuff that Mickey made!

From Michelle I. :

I've always liked this one a lot. Poor Mickey tries to save his garden from a horrible insect infestation, and in doing so hallucinates about giant bugs. Clever fun ensues as he and Pluto try to get away from them all. I personally like seeing Mickey's house be lifted by the enormous growing vegetation and the huge mushrooms that spring up around him.

From Fredrik J. :

What a wonderful short. While the theme at it's core is technically horror, with Mickey and Pluto running from one deadly menace to another with no seeming escape in sight, all the hilarious gags featuring the insects make it very light-hearted and humorous. The setting could've working well as a Silly Symphony, as most of the gags in the short are provided by the bugs rather than the main characters, but Mickey and Pluto help bridge the scenes together in a great way. Top notch.

From Xia Shen :

I remember having a tape with this on it as a child. I was always frightened of the bugs, though, haha. I know the tape had another two cartoons on it ... One about ice skating, and I can't remember the other one.

From Gabe Bennett :

This is not one of my favorite Mickey Mouse shorts.

I always tend to think of Disney shorts as being lighthearted and funny (not counting the serious wartime entries like Education For Death, of course), but, the overall horror of the situation depicted in this one has always sort of ruined it for me. In fact, when I was younger this short used to give me nightmares; especially the part where Pluto is howling in terror inside the giant lightning bug after being swallowed alive.

That part always made me think what an awful way to die that would be.

On a positive note, I'll admit it has it's moments and there are some pretty clever puns and gags like the winking potato eyes or the bugs getting drunk off of Mickey's homebrew bug poison (as in the old expression for choosing an alcoholic drink, "pick your poison"). Also, the part where Mickey's house is lifted-up by the gigantic vegetation and has vines growing out of every corner reminds me a lot of similar scenes in the Mickey and the Beanstalk segment of "Fun and Fancy Free", which would come out 12 years later in 1947.

From Gijs Grob :

Mickey's second color cartoon is Pluto's first: he passes the transition into color fluently, getting his typical orange color we're all familiar with now. Mickey and Pluto are in the garden trying to kill a number of insects eating Mickey's crop. When Mickey accidently sprays himself with bug poison he starts to hallucinate (the transition to the dreamworld is particularly psychedelic: everything, including the background becomes unsteady and wobbly). He dreams that all plants and bugs have grown. This leads to some imaginative scenes. The bugs are not very lifelike, though. The animators even make a weird mistake giving a particularly evil-looking beetle eight legs instead of six.

From Bill :

I loved this short, it reminded me of Thru the Mirror where Mickey steps into a surreal world. This is the same concept. After trying to battle bugs to save his garden, Mickey accidentally drinks some of the bug poison and either dreams or hallucinates a world were the bugs are big and try to take over. This short had some great imagination gags, like when the "eyes" of the potato are left on the ground after being eaten by the bugs, but the best animation was when Mickey started dreaming, with the world twisting and turning and his head getting bigger and smaller. Even in 1935, a good storyman had a great plot for Mickey.

From Tom Wilkins :

This was certainly one of the stranger shorts, which focused upon a nightmare happening (that's twice at least in 1935). This one involves Mickey, while Pluto had his turn in Pluto's Judgment Day a short time later. If you focus at this cartoon deeply enough, it tends to take you into the dream that Mickey is having, which finally ends after he gets splashed with a pumpkin to conclude the film. So there seems to be an underlying theme of cartoon hypnosis that I feel plays a factor. Though this was a far cry from the concept of A Bugs' Life nearly 6 decades later, this early sketch was not necessarily one of his greatest cartoons, but one with more underlying factors than others. I am very curious in wondering from watching the In Living Color Volume 1 collection: why after all these years are we still stuck with the re-release entrance & end title cards, when we obviously know the grays were used during this era? (Same can be said for The Band Concert, On Ice, Pluto's Judgment Day, and Mickey's Circus.) I only say this because if three Silly Symphonies were able to restore their title cards (Santa's Workshop, The Night Before Christmas, and Three Little Pigs), then the rest have to be somewhere, lurking about the Disney animated vaults.

From Ryan Kilpatrick at The Disney Film Project :

For Mickey’s second color short, Mickey’s Garden, the animators took another crack at marginalizing the main mouse. Mickey is the “star” of this short only in the sense that it’s his name in the title. The real stars of this one are the bugs in his garden.

The idea is that Mickey has bugs in his garden, and is going to all extremes to get rid of them. He has concocted a brew that he sprays at the bugs, driving them away. As is always the case with any good Disney cartoon, something goes horribly wrong. Pluto chases a bug and falls back into Mickey, who gets sprayed with his own poison.

At that point, we enter Mickey’s fever dream, and Mickey becomes a secondary character in his own short. Instead, we are treated to the rampage of the bugs, as in Mickey’s dream, everything grows to titanic proportions, including the garden and the bugs.

This is where Mickey is really a marginal part of the short. The bugs are the focus, drinking from the bug poison as though it were alcohol, tying themselves into knots, and chasing Mickey and Pluto around the garden. The problem this time is that the bugs are just not that compelling. As a viewer, you don’t root for them or enjoy watching them.

Instead, it’s somewhat confusing, because of the natural affection that viewers have for Mickey, you want to root for him. But here, he’s the one threatening the bugs, who have loveable, cuddly designs for the most part. It’s very incongruous, because the “hero” is the one threatening the characters who appear the most.

I think that disjointed premise makes this one come off flat to me. Pluto is in the short, but he’s not featured much, merely there as the way to get Mickey sprayed with the insecticide. Mickey doesn’t speak much in this one, but wrestles with the bugs and does end up with his typical Pluto embrace at the end.

Honestly, it’s sort of disappointing to see the degree to which Mickey has been moved to the side in his own shorts. At least in The Band Concert he was the central figure, as the action swirled around him, sometimes literally. Here, he could easily be replaced with another character, and nothing would change about the short. It’s easy to see why so many future shorts would focus on Pluto or Goofy and Donald. This is not the same Mickey we saw in earlier shorts.

History

Sources