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Title:	Make Mine Music: Gold Classic Collection (1946)
Studio Line:	Disney Share in Walt Disney's extraordinary vision of pairing imaginative stories with spectacular music in Disney's 8th full-length animated classic, available for the first time ever. In the tradition of Fantasia, Make Mine Music is a glorious collection of nine musically charged animated shorts featuring such fun-filled favorites as "Peter And The Wolf", narrated by the beloved voice behind Winnie The Pooh. In addition, you'll enjoy such classic cartoon hits as "Casey At The Bat," "The Whale Who Wanted To Sing At The Met" and "Johnnie Fedora And Alice Bluebonnet," the whimsical adventure of two hats who fall in love in a department store window. Every member of your family will bond to a favorite within this musical medley of fun and fantasy from Disney!
Director:	Bob Cormack and Clyde Geronimi
Cast:	Nelson Eddy, Dinah Shore, Jerry Colonna, Andy Russell, Sterling Holloway, David Lichine, Tania Riabouchinskaya
DVD:	Standard 1.33:1; audio English Digital Mono, Spanish Digital Mono; subtitles none; closed-captioned; single side - single layer; 10 chapters; rated NR; 67 min.; $29.99; street date 6/6/00.
Supplements:	Include the classic Disney cartoons: The Band Concert, Farmyard Symphony, and Music Land.
Purchase:	DVD

Picture/Sound/Extras: B-/D+/C Time for some more "meat and potatoes" animation from Disney! Walt used that phrase to describe the path the studio needed to take in the mid-Forties. After a few lovely and lavish but expensive and financially unsuccessful films in the early part of that decade, Disney decided he couldn't afford to continue to bleed money with these beautiful failures. As such, the studio went with more basic projects for the second half of the decade to get themselves back onto more stable ground. Financially, it worked. Beginning with the live-action/animated hybrid Saludos Amigos in 1943, relatively cheap and easy projects became the rule. From SA through 1949's The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, each and every Disney animated picture was a compilation of different segments, whether two fairly long stories (such as in Ichabod and 1947's Fun and Fancy Free) or a slew of short pieces. Which brings us to the movie at hand: 1946's Make Mine Music. This picture comes across as an attempt to remake 1940's Fantasia with a less high-brow attitude; instead of that film's classical music, all of the tunes in MMM fell firmly within the realm of the period's popular fare. Ironically, though Disney's "meat and potatoes" pictures did bring the studio back into the black (which let them embark on another series of true animated classics in the Fifties), it's the films from the first part of the Forties that have stood the test of time. Movies like Pinocchio, Bambi and Fantasia may not have done well financially during their initial releases, but they've made back their costs and plenty more upon subsequent reissues and they've earned the status of beloved classics. The same can't be said for the cheaper fare like MMM. Since its initial appearance, this titles has gone largely unnoticed. Oh, Disney geeks like myself know about it, and I'm sure it's moved a few videotapes because of the Disney name, but it doesn't enjoy much of an audience these days. I won't say that's appropriate, but I also won't tout this movie as an unfortunately-ignored classic, for it's not. MMM provides intermittent pleasures but doesn't make for a consistently enjoyable experience. Granted, it's difficult for any anthology of shorts to keep a viewer stimulated from start to finish, but this program seems less consistent than most. Highlights are few. The most interesting parts of MMM come from the very clever and touching "The Whale Who Wanted to Sing At the Met" and also from the wacky "Casey at the Bat". Each of these shorts are very good, though only "The Whale..." threatens to become a genuine classic. After that, it's a mixed bag. A few shorts seem pretty good; "Johnnie Fedora and Alice Bluebonnet" again demonstrates Disney's amazing capacity to make inanimate objects come to life with charm and humor, and "Peter and the Wolf" offers a decent retelling of that tale. Once we get past those clips, however, I found myself mildly bored. I've read accolades for "All the Cats Join In", which indeed offers a vivid and unusual visual style (for Disney), but it lacked any form of narrative and seemed silly. The remainder of the shorts are essentially mood pieces that left me cold. One other thing I don't like is when studios edit films. Some alterations are very insignificant, such as the hidden nudie pictures in The Rescuers. However, Disney go too far when they cut small bits of movies in the interest of cleaning up material that may not be "politically correct". This pattern affected parts of Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Saludos Amigos; the former lost some racy footage, while the powers-that-be chopped out some shots of Goofy smoking in the latter. The same anti-Joe Camel motive affects Melody Time, as frames of Pecos Bill puffing on a butt disappear. I knew about those changes in advance, so I was ready for them and they didn't bother me much; I'd prefer to see the original material, but I could live with the edit. However, I wasn't aware that Make Mine Music included any changes, but it does, and one of them is extremely major. The smaller one apparently occurs during "All the Cats Join In". We see a young gal hop out of a shower at one point, and as it stands, it's surprisingly racy for Disney; no, you don't see any skin, but there's a quick glimpse of her breasts from the side/rear, and you don't expect to see that in a Disney flick. I've read that a few additional frames of her chest were removed. Unfortunately, I can't confirm that. However, I can confirm the larger edit. The DVD of MMM runs about 67 minutes, whereas the original went for 75. The shorter length occurs because one entire short - "The Martins and the Coys" - has been removed! This is unforgivable. Because I never saw MMM, I wasn't aware of this change until I browsed through a Disney book and noticed that I didn't recognize that segment. Fearful I'd blacked out when I watched the DVD, I rechecked it and confirmed that "The Martins and the Coys" is nowhere to be found on it. This really makes me angry. Disney's politically correct minor alterations are bad enough, especially because of the potential audience for films like Melody Time and Saludos Amigos; surely they'll end up with a lot of kids, but because of their obscurity and their relatively low overall sales, the percentage of DVDs in the hands of adult Disney collectors like myself will be much higher than for movies like Pinocchio or The Little Mermaid. I don't think the edits are justified in any case, but they make less sense in niche titles like MMM. I could live with the edits of a few frames here or there, but the excision of a complete eight-minute cartoon is inexcusable. The short in question seems to be a "Romeo and Juliet" style story of two lovers caught in between their feuding families. I didn't know that hillbillies were suddenly off-limits, but I guess so; too much moonshine and too many guns for our impressionable youngsters. Gimme a break. Chances are the missing short wouldn't push Make Mine Music into the realm of really good DVD in any case, but this butchering has to stop. As much as I love Disney animation and want to have a complete collection, if I'd known that MMM would be crudely edited, I probably wouldn't have bought it; though the fact I only paid $4 for it makes it less of a big deal, I might actually have rebuffed it on principle. This insane reworking of their history has got to stop. The DVD: Make Mine Music appears in its original theatrical aspect ratio of approximately 1.37:1 on this single-sided, single-layered DVD; due to those dimensions, the image has not been enhanced for 16X9 televisions. The fairly ordinary look of MMM seems mildly disappointing, but it still appears good for such an old film. Actually, in the sharpness department, MMM seems crisp and accurate throughout the film and it offers no instances of softness; the movie appeared well-focussed and detailed. Moiré effects and jagged edges also are not issues, but print flaws are. Light speckling occurs frequently, and I also noticed mild grain much of the time. I didn't see any more significant problems such as hairs, scratches or large blotches. I also felt that the movie displayed a vaguely gauzy appearance; it's hard to define, but the print simply seemed less bright than it should have. Colors generally appear true and accurate, though I felt they often looked a little too strong and heavy; as with much of the rest of the picture, the hues seemed less vivid than they should have. Black levels appear nicely deep and rich, however, and shadow detail looks similarly clear and appropriate. Ultimately, Make Mine Music really looks quite nice, but so many Disney animated films present fantastic images that "quite nice" doesn't rate too highly. The monaural soundtrack of Make Mine Music offers quality that's surprisingly weak, unfortunately. Dialogue remains edgy and harsh, though it's not much of a concern here; the only spoken lines come during "Casey at the Bat" and "Peter and the Wolf". Singing also betrays some distortion, as do some of the musical instruments and effects. The general tone of the audio appears a bit thin and lacks much dynamic range; we don't even get any minor low end. At least this track lacks any tape hiss or other defects of that sort. The quality is largely acceptable for an old movie, but the rough edge makes it sound worse than it should. The supplemental features of Make Mine Music consist of three different cartoons. The best of the bunch is a Mickey Mouse project, "The Band Concert" (1935, nine minutes and 20 seconds). Donald Duck makes a strong appearance and steals the show (though it's interesting to note that "TBC" shows Mickey before he became completely innocuous; he gets pretty rough with the Duck at times.) Two of Disney's "Silly Symphonies" appear as well: 1938's "Farmyard Symphony" (eight minutes and 15 seconds) and 1935's "Music Land" (nine and a half minutes). Neither is terribly compelling, though the mismatched lovers of "ML" make for a better story (maybe this was intended to make us forget the similarly-themed "Martins and Coys" segment of the film?). "FS" is cute but forgettable. Make Mine Music continues the questionable trend we now find on many Disney DVDs: a slew of advertisements that appear prior to the main menu. The DVD starts with the usual copyright warning, and then it launches immediately into an announcer with his usual "Coming soon to own on video and DVD..." line. On both DVDs we find ads for the Disney Gold Classic Collection as a whole plus promos for The Little Mermaid II and The Tigger Movie. I don't particularly mind these ads; they offer some potentially interesting information and my Panasonic players allow me to quickly and easily skip them through the "chapter skip" button. However, many others detest these trailers; some feel that way just due to the principle of the thing, whereas others have had a trouble bypassing the commercials as easily as I could do so. It appears some DVD players have more difficulty with them than others, though I haven't heard of any concrete trends that indicate any particular models that all refuse to advance. Whether these ads are a serious negative or just a mild nuisance is up to you, but be warned that they're there. A more positive feature appears on these and other Disney "Gold Classic Collection" DVDs. According to Disney, they're supporting the DVD with a 30-day money-back guarantee; if you don't like the DVD for any reason, they'll refund your cost. I have no idea how easy or difficult it'll be to do so, but I thought this made for a nice gesture. Some drawbacks to that offer exist. For one, there's a limit of $23.49 that you can receive, so if you paid more than that, you're out of luck. Also, the forms indicate that "store cash register receipts must emanate from the same state as the consumer address." That's nuts! That excludes most of the folks who buy their DVDs online - which probably was the intention - but also may affect those who live in areas that intersect closely. For example, I live in Virginia but I work in Maryland, which is all of five miles from my apartment. I'm also a mere twelve miles from the District of Columbia. If I stop by a store on the way home from work and grab a Disney title there, I'm out of luck in regard to this plan because I don't live in Maryland. What difference does it make in which state the person bought the DVD? As long as the receipt backs up the purchase, it shouldn't matter. Why complicate something intended as a public relations gesture? In any case, it's a good thing Make Mine Music offers the satisfaction guarantee, since I think many angry fans will want to return the DVD when they discover it doesn't include all of the original feature. Since I got mine from an Internet retailer, I'm out of luck, but I hope my rant will keep others from making the same mistake. I love Disney animation and wanted to like MMM, but it generally seems fairly bland and forgettable. The DVD offers decent picture and extras, but the sound appears weak. However, all of that could be forgiven; the omission of eight minutes of the film cannot. If for no other reason than as a protest, stay away from Make Mine Music. Menu: DVD Movie Guide | Archive | Top