Mickey’s Christmas Carol (1983)

By the early 1980s, Disney’s animation branch was a mere shadow of its former self.  Though their films were still finding audiences and are still fondly remembered by those young enough have to fallen for their charms at the time, films like The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (1977), The Rescuers (1977) and The Fox and the Hound (1981) weren’t a patch of the earlier classics. There was nothing in them that had the emotional heft of scenes like Dumbo (1941) visiting his mum or the generation-traumatising off-camera death of Bambi‘s (1942) mother. Since the death of Walt Disney in 1966 and the release of the last film he’d worked in, The Jungle Book (1967), the company’s animated offerings had slowly been losing some of their pizzazz and they wouldn’t really get it back until the huge worldwide success of the vastly superior The Little Mermaid in 1989.

It was against this backdrop that the company decided to release the first Mickey Mouse theatrical release in 30 years, since the short film The Simple Things in 1953. Mickey’s Christmas Carol turned out to be a surprisingly effective animated take on Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, one that was as much a love letter to the company’s past as anything else, being chock full of cameos from some of their best loved characters.

The plot follows Dickens’ original closely, greatly condensing it to fit its 26 minute running time (it’s sort of a Christmas Carol’s Greatest Hits package) and was based in large part on a Disneyland Records musical from 1974 titled An Adaptation of Dickens’ Christmas Carol. On Christmas Eve, the miserly and bullying Ebenezer Scrooge (Scrooge McDuck) is visited by four ghosts (Goofy, Jiminy Cricket, Willie the Giant and Pete) who try to get him to change his ways and be a bit kinder, especially to his cheery nephew Fred (Donald Duck) and his hard done by employee Bob Cratchit (Mickey Mouse).

Even if you’re not a particular fan of Mickey Mouse – and he can be one of he most annoying of animated characters – there’s still much to enjoy here. In truth, Mickey’s Christmas Carol is misnamed as Mickey (voiced here by Wayne Allwine) is barely in it, the bulk of the film being carried by McDuck (voiced by Alan Young) who rather unfortunately reinforces the already outdated stereotype of the stingy Scotsman. Elsewhere Clarence Nash make his final appearance as Donald Duck.

For old time Disney animation fans a lot of the fun comes in spotting the many little cameos from other Disney characters. Toad, Ratty, Moley and the weasels from The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr Toad (1949), Otto, Skippy, Toby and Lady Kluck from Robin Hood (1973), Uncle Waldo from The Aristocats (1970), the lead characters and their lupine nemesis from Three Little Pigs (1933) and a whole host of regulars from the short films, including Minnie Mouse, Daisy Duck, Morty and Ferdie Fieldmouse, Chip and Dale, Horace Horsecollar, Clarabelle Cow and many others can all be found in roles of varying size, some appearing as nothing more than animated extras.

One of the many joys of Dickens’ story is how malleable it’s proven to be, easily adapted into any number of media and forms. Even here it survives its “Disneyfication”, the humour finding a natural place in the story’s framework without ever felling forced and providing plenty of space for its myriad cameos. It abandons many of the nuances of Dickens – don’t all adaptations? – but it acts as a fun and engaging introduction to the story for younger audiences.

Though it was released to generally negative reviews – the best ones were lukewarm at best – Mickey’s Christmas Carol struck a chord (the love for Mickey Mouse hadn’t faded one bit it seems) and audiences loved it when it was released as the support film to 1983 re-issues of The Rescuers (1977) in the States and The Jungle Book (1967) in the UK. Repeated television broadcasts and home video releases have helped it to gain traction with subsequent generations and on its original release it impressed the Academy enough for them to nominate it for the Best Animated Short Subject for 1983 (it lost to Jimmy Picker’s excellent Sundae in New York).

Disney adapted the story again in animated form in the less impressive feature length film A Christmas Carol, directed by Robert Zemeckis and starring Jim Carrey and Gary Oldman, in 2009.