One of dozens and dozens of unregarded classics produced by Disney
Spleen
Jack Hannah must be THE most underrated cartoon director of all time; in my estimation he is second only to Chuck Jones. In quality of output, that is. He MAY…
Jack Hannah must be THE most underrated cartoon director of all time; in my estimation he is second only to Chuck Jones. In quality of output, that is. He MAY not have been as inherently talented as Tex Avery or even Friz Freleng (I must grit my teeth as I say this), but he had one inestimable advantage over them and all his other more highly regarded contemporaries: he worked for Disney, and so was allowed to direct the most rounded, passionate, comically inspired cartoon character of all time: Donald Duck.Donald is not just, as popular belief would have it, someone who gets mad. He's someone with ungoverned, ungovernable passions, of which anger is just one: hunger, weariness, envy, spite, lust and love are some of the others. The humour comes (in part) from the fact that all along he thinks he's in control. And in fact, the resulting cartoons ARE more controlled. Donald does not break the laws of physics as often or as outrageously as Bugs Bunny does - he cannot pull a stick of dynamite out of nowhere just because it suits the plot - but when he DOES do the impossible, one feels the sheer force of his personality pushing him. It's like watching (and listening to) a jet as it crosses the sound barrier.This cartoon proves my points as well as any other. It's one of Donald's and Hannah's very best. The 1950s could easily have been their finest decade together, if the economics of production hadn't cut Hannah's Disney career short in 1956. Very likely it WAS their finest decade even so. Even if "The New Neighbor" were the routine Donald outing you'd expect from reading a synopsis of the plot, which it isn't, the strength of Donald's character would be enough to make it funnier and more vibrant than the ritualised gaggery Warner Brothers was churning out at the time. -Except, that is, for the cartoons of Chuck Jones - another director who understood the value of building his humour on a strong foundation of character.
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★ 7 / 10
In this brief film the Dizzy Mega Corporation confesses . . .
pixrox1
. . . exactly WHAT kind of NEW NEIGHBOR it intends to become in Florida when it opens its eponymous World "theme park" near Orlando, FL. In the context of this…
. . . exactly WHAT kind of NEW NEIGHBOR it intends to become in Florida when it opens its eponymous World "theme park" near Orlando, FL. In the context of this confessional, "Pete" stands in for Dizzy. When Don Duck arrives just after Pete's advent, Pete immediately dumps a barrel of foul garbage onto Don's property, allows his large dog to dig up Don's flower bed, empties the entire contents of Don's fridge into his own personal shopping cart and "borrows" all of Don's tools. Things begin to get ugly between Don and Pete after that. This telegraph's virtually all the Real Life low-lights when Dizzy muscled in on Florida a few years later. Fortunately, the Sunshine State's current hero governor essentially evicted Dizzy from his region this Spring: good riddance.
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7.1/10
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