User Reviews

Personally, unlike the other reviewers of this cartoon, I found "Galloppin' Gaucho" very entertaining and I personally prefer it to Mickey Mouse's first two cartoons before it, "Plane Crazy" and "Steamboat Willie", for the following reasons: 1. In the previous episodes, Mickey Mouse was quite a horrible, prank-playing character, who could be quite mean to Minnie Mouse or innocent animals. In this episode, he was not particularly mean to anyone (anyone innocent, anyway) and was very good to Minnie. 2. The plot in this cartoon is somewhat cliché, but I found it very entertaining all the same and is a plot change from the Looney Tunes cartoons I usually watch (where no respected girlfriend is featured). 3. As I mentioned before, Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse are very "cool" in this episode and they both dance very well (in a sort of slow-music style).

In this cartoon, Mickey Mouse is travelling on an ostrich/rhea, in South America and he stops at a bar by the road. There, he sees a very attractive female mouse, dancing to the guitar. She too notices Mickey and also finds him very attractive and they dance together (once both have impressed each other a little more). Suddenly, Minnie Mouse is snatched away by a huge (but normal size in real-life comparison from mice to cats) and fierce cat, who obviously plans on eating her. He takes Minnie away to his abode and Mickey quickly decides to go on after her. Will Mickey Mouse save his new love in time? I recommend this cartoon to anyone who enjoys Mickey and Minnie Mouse cartoons in general and to people who like old cartoons with a clever slapstick style intertwined with the story. Enjoy "Gallopin' Gaucho"! :-) 8 and a half out of ten.

This cartoon is one of the shorts Walt Disney produced after his contract in the Oswald business concluded. It also among the earliest cartoons to feature Mickey Mouse.

One thing that intrigues me is the girl mouse who wears pumps that are too big for her (She probably borrowed them from her mom.). When she dances with Mickey, her heels would often slip out. And when the villainous cat captures her, the shoes fell off. I think it would be more interesting if we get to see the shoes actually come off (We can't see it because she was swung past the edge of the screen.).

Anyway, the cartoon is quite fun to watch. Mickey will come to the rescue.

Both "Steamboat Willie" and "Plane Crazy" are timeless classics. Personally, while very entertaining, due to its somewhat minimal story, I didn't find it as much as a classic. Still it has held up well, with some nice black and white animation, plus the music is absolutely wonderful here, particularly in the sword fight between Mickey and Pete. Speaking of Mickey, he is so cool here, he smokes, dances the tango and challenges others to sword fights. Minnie is also quite hot, and Pete is suitably villainous. Walt Disney does a great job with the vocals, making the most of the little amount of dialogue he has, as a vast majority of the cartoon is driven by visuals and music. All in all, entertaining and worth watching. 8/10 Bethany Cox

The Gallopin' Gaucho (1928)

*** (out of 4)

Mickey Mouse is visiting Mexico and walks into a Cantina where he sees Minnie Mouse dancing up a storm. Naturally he jumps in and two begin to have a swell time but then a large cat jumps in and steals her. THE GALLOPIN' GAUCHO was the second of three Mickey cartoons that were made in 1928 and there's no question that, drawing wise, Mickey went through some changes since the first one. With that said, out of the three films this here is clearly the weakest but it's certainly still worth watching and especially if you're not too familiar with these early films. There's certainly good animation throughout but there's really no giant laughs to be had.

Walt Disney knew he had a winning model in Mickey when he introduced the character in May 1928's "Plane Crazy." But he was discouraged not buyers wanted to pick up the cartoon. He had Ub Iwerks draw up a second Mickey cartoon, "The Gallopin' Gaucho," in an attempt to create interest in his mouse. Mickey is not the innocent rodent fans later knew him by. He rides into town on a South American rhea-not an ostrich as most believe his transport looks like. He enters a tavern and immediately lights up a cigar, swilling a beer with it. Minnie displays an erotic tango dance movement, and the two recreate Douglas Fairbanks' lusty steps with Lupe Valez in his 1927 "The Gaucho." The evil Black Pete, familiar to fans of Disney's "Alice's Comedies" and "Oswald the Lucky Rabbit," kidnaps Minnie and drags her out of the place. Mickey retrieves his rhea, only to discover the giant bird is smashed by drinking several beers. The mouse ends up carrying the passed out rhea while Pete brings Minnie to a house upstairs to take advantage of her. Mickey uses a Fairbanks trick to get up to Pete's third floor bedroom where the two duel with swords. Mickey throws a bedpan, landing over Pete's head, incapacitating him. Minnie escapes with Mickey on top of the now sober rhea. They all race behind a screen of trees, hiding what the two mouses romantically intend to do.

Viewers were ambivalent towards Disney's new cartoon, released August 1928. In the preview surveys, a majority felt felt Mickey, Minnie and Black Pete acted immoral and not characters they wanted their kids to look up to. What's unusual about "The Gallopin' Goucho" is Minnie is first seen wearing her famous oversized shoes early in the cartoon, but doesn't have them on towards the end. Disney wasn't totally in despair with his first two Mickey cartoons' rejection and would revisit them after sound was introduced to animation months later. Over a course of time, Mickey changed his adult behavior, appealing more to children than adults. The rodent became a model of good behavior, a wholesome character where parents weren't embarrassed by his actions.

Who knew Mickey Mouse could be so un-pc? Drinking, smoking, picking up strange lady mice in out of the way watering holes. It's primitive, but more fun than his later incarnation.

A Walt Disney MICKEY MOUSE Cartoon.

THE GALLOPIN' GAUCHO must speed to rescue cantina dancer Minnie from the foul clutches of Pete, the outlaw cat.

This ancient black & white film was only the second Mickey Mouse cartoon released with synchronized sound. It's fun watching The Mouse doing a Douglas Fairbanks spoof - using his tail the way Doug did his bullwhip in THE GAUCHO (1927). Is Mickey's faithful Argentinean mount an ostrich or a rhea? The Disney animators were already making full use of underwear & posterior jokes. Pete still has both legs in this one.

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 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, Bambi, Peter Pan and Mr. Toad. Walt never forgot that his fortunes were all started by a mouse, or that simplicity of message and lots of hard work always pay off.

One of the earliest Mickey and Minnie cartoons, about Mickey trying to save Minnie from a mean cat who stole her after they two mice were doing the tango. The tango was the most funniest part in the cartoon short, with their eyes furiously gazing at each other. The rest of the story is just the usual rescue-the-damsel-in-distress plot, not much to laugh about.

Grade C

Mickey is a gaucho--an Argentinian cowboy. He rides an ostrich for some reason. He goes to a cantina where Minnie is a dancer. They hook up, but it isn't long before she is kidnapped by Pete, the giant cat. There are all sorts of interesting implausibles, mostly involving mouse tails. Anyway, it's a decent little film. Mickey starts to gain a little personality.

I remember watching this as a kid on Youtube and much like many of Mickey's other shorts, I thought this was funny. It may not be Plane Crazy or Steamboat Willie, but it's still entertaining to watch and has some good scenes such as when Mickey dances with Minnie. If you like Mickey, i'd say check it out.

Boy finds girl, boy loses girl to big early-era Pete, boy runs after Pete who has girl on his back, boy has to fight Pete in a house using a sword and (mostly) his wits. Here we have such an early Mickey Mouse cartoon - actually the second one, made just before Steamboat Willie (sound was added in later on, and like Plane Crazy it's hard to think how it ever worked without it, though in theory it can) - that we see Mickey smoking in his entrance to Minnie Mouse. Smoking! Such things probably would get censored in current-era Disney, but in 1928, it was all about getting a gag or a goof.

Here we have the kind of early cartoons that have characters dancing and their necks bend together and twist around in a tango, and when a character rides an ostrich it has the bounciness and buoyancy of just... I don't know what! The gags here are tremendous and the pace is relentless for its 6 minutes; even when the day is saved (hey, is this a spoiler, c'mon), you don't know if something else could happen between Mickey and Minnie. The joy in seeing these characters make their tails into coiled springs so they can reach up to one another and kiss at the end is why Disney made a name for himself. While today the studio would be a little too wholesome, arguably, with this character, back then Mickey was a tough cookie.

The Gallopin' Gaucho is one of the first three cartoons to star Mickey Mouse, a character who has become a corporate mascot and a pop culture icon. While these early cartoons tend to portray Mickey as more of a troublemaker, this short would be the first to show his heroic side.

In this short, Mickey, the Gallopin' Gaucho, arrives at Cantino Argentino on his ostrich, and falls in love with dancer Minnie and shares a dance with her. However, he soon comes to Minnie's rescue when she is kidnapped by Black Pete.

Now this the one of the three 1928 shorts I prefer, as it shows the heroic Mickey, while the other two show Mickey being a trickster. Also, the film is one where the characters do not talk, but it allows the music and animation to shine.

IT WOULS SEEM that the big items of the day were very important in formulating the themes of these variously plotted cartoons. The current events and those who made the news were the central to the body of these cartoon shorts. The thread bare plot lines and the gags were all modified to fit into the subject of the day.

IN THE CASE of this honored review's subject matter, being THE GALLOPIN' GAUCHO, incorporates three Hollywood successes from three very different sources and on-screen personalities of Movie Stars.

FIRST OF ALL, this title and character's Argentine locale seem to suggest that of Rudolph Valentino's portrayals. Mickey even does a brief Tango when entering the Cantina. His partner was most seductive and rodent-oriented sexy Minnie.

OUR NEXT CONTRIBUTOR to this characterization and storyline is Douglas Fairbanks. The super-athletic stunts and daring do of the hero here (Mickey, of course) are obviously inspired by Fairbanks on screen vim and heroic demeanor. Zorro, the Black Pirate and other characters created and performed by Doug, himself.

THIRDLY, AND THIS one may strike some as coming in from left field, we can see a little of Warner Baxter's Cisco Kid from IN OLD ARIZONA. This was the only "ancestor" film to be included that was a Talkie, but it was released that year, was surely fresh in the minds of all and featured Cisco with his name and likeness plastered all around on Wanted posters.

MUCH THE SAME as previous production, PLANE CRAZY, this was conceived and filmed as a silent; but later updated as a sound comedy via the process of "Post-synchronization"*

NOTE * Even STEAMBOAT WILLIE was made to talk and sing in this manner, although it was planned for Mickey as a sound film from the get-go.