The fifth film in Disney’s oft forgotten “Package Film Era,” Melody Time is another series of short films tied together and released as a feature film. This time, however, the shorts were themed around popular and folk music, similar to what Fantasia did with classical music. But comparing Melody Time to Fantasia is giving it way too much credit. While some of the shorts are decent enough, Melody Time lacks Fantasia’s scope and sense of artistry, nor does it feel like the segments are all collective parts of a singular vision like Fantasia did. Melody Time is simply another package film from Disney’s first dark age in the late 1940s.
One thing I definitely give Melody Time credit for is that it features no filler segues in between the animated shorts. So the film just goes from one short to the next, which is a nice change of pace after Fun and Fancy Free had way too much filler.
Melody Time features seven short segments of varying quality: The first is Once Upon a Wintertime. It’s a simple romance story between a boy and girl who spend time ice skating before tragedy almost strikes and the boy has to save the girl. It’s okay.
The second short, Bumble Boogie, livens things up a bit. Taking inspiration from Rinsky-Korsakov’s Flight of the Bumblebee (a song that was considered for Fantasia), Bumble Boogie sees a lone bee trying to survive amidst the surrealistic sights and sounds of the short. It’s fun.
The third film included is also the longest, The Legend of Johnny Appleseed. It really is the simple story of John Chapman planting apple trees in the days of the pioneers. The short also has a bit of a Christian overtone, which is interesting given that Walt Disney was against featuring overt religious references in his films. The Legend of Johnny Appleseed has its charms, but again, it’s unspectacular.
For round four, we have Little Toot, the story of a mischievous young tugboat. I don’t know, maybe it’s because I generally don’t care for anthropomorphic vehicle characters (they’re just so limited), but I found myself kind of bored with this one. It’s not horrible, just mediocre and forgettable.
Trees, the fifth short of Melody Time, is a short poem that provides some colorful visuals, but not a whole lot else. Honestly, there’s not much else to say.
The sixth short is Blame it on the Samba, which reunites Donald Duck with José Carioca the parrot (Panchito Pistoles is regrettably absent). Here, the duck and parrot duo encounter the Aracuan Bird (the gibberish-speaking bird from The Three Caballeros), who introduces them to the samba. This short is good fun, and features the surrealism that usually accompanies Donald Duck and José Carioca, including another mixture of animation and live-action. Blame it on the Samba picks the film up a little, but it does also kind of make you wish you were watching The Three Caballeros instead.
Finally, the film ends with Pecos Bill, the only short in Melody Time to get an introduction for some reason. The short is introduced by actor Roy Rogers, who is telling the story of Pecos Bill to child actress Luana Patten (the same actress from Fun and Fancy Free. Geez, Disney couldn’t even get new actors during this time).
The short itself is…poorly aged, to put it lightly. Pecos Bill is a wild man raised by coyotes who becomes a cowboy, helps shape Texas, smokes a lot (his cigarettes are uncensored for the first time in decades on Disney+), and rides a horse named Widowmaker.
Pecos Bill would be a bland short as it is (it’s also the second longest in Melody Time), but it gets bumped down several pegs for how dated it is. Pecos Bill is supposed to come across like some kind of wild rogue hero, but instead comes across like an ignorant jackass. He shoots at a tribe of Native Americans to scare them away because they exist, and when he woos and kisses the first woman he sees, his pistols remove themselves from their holsters and fire into the air in what is the most overt sexual innuendo in the history of Disney animation (all the weirder considering the more conservative time period the film was released in). It’s just kind of…uncomfortable.
In the end, Melody Time is an inconsistent series of short films. Another mediocre hodgepodge of a compilation that, for some reason, is accepted and embraced as part of the official canon of Walt Disney Animation Studios films. I like the Samba short (which proves once again that Donald and José are the saving grace of these package films), and the bumblebee short is fun. Three of the shorts are watchable but nothing noteworthy, Little Toot is kind of a bore, and Pecos Bill can be outright offensive.
I understand that Disney was in a tight spot in the 1940s, so these package films were a means to make something cost effective that could bring in money to keep things afloat. But the fact that Disney continues to acknowledge these package films as official entries in their animated canon is baffling. The package films just feel like they’re filling out the numbers in Disney’s animated history, without actually contributing anything meaningful to it.
Melody Time has some good segments, but more of them fail to leave any kind of lasting impression. And closing out the ‘film’ with the Pecos Bill short was definitely a bad choice, one that has only been magnified with age.
Wizard Dojo 