Review of The Country Cousin

"The Country Cousin" is an American cartoon from 1936 and at slightly under 9 minutes, it is a bit longer than they usually were. the director is Wilfred Jackson and maybe this bit of information is already enough for you to know that this is a work by Disney. It won Walt Disney one of his earlier Academy Awards and pulled through against opposition from Fleischer and Harman. It was not one of those years where all or almost all of the nominees were by Disney. But back to this one here. This is the story of two mice: the city mouse invites the country mouse to its home and havoc ensues quickly afterward. You get a lot you can expectg here like cheese and cats that of course are closely related to the subject of mice in cartoons, in many cartoons, not just this one. Add to that a bit of alcohol that gets the country mouse drunk and she stays that for almost the rest of the film and also gets the country mouse courageous enough to kick the cat in the butt. Other than that there is an edible "mirror" reflection scene that was among the better parts of this short film. But overall, it was too weak in my opinion. Sure a lot happened here, but it did not really explain precisely why the mouse would panick in the end and return to the country side. And how wasn't she drunk anymore? In general the character seem to possess at least human strengths here as the mouse survives a lot of alcohol in its system easily and the cat survives an electric shock. All in all, not a worthy Oscar winner in my opinion. Of course visually in terms of looks this is really strong, but lets not forget that this was the Golden Age of Animation and there were many many other animated shorts from this year and many many of them were superior. Finally, I think I remember having watched a Tom and Jerry cartoon from slightly afterwards and that one was better. This one here gets a thumbs-down from me. It does not really have a lot of wit and the situational and slapstick comedy did not make enough of an impression for me here to like this one.