JohnHowardReid An omnibus of short song segments, climaxed by an extended fantasy with Nelson Eddy in which the singer voices for a whale. This is indeed the highlight of the movie, with Eddy running through "Shortnin' Bread", "Largo al Factotum" from Rossini's Barber of Seville, the sextette (yes, the sextette, with Eddy singing all the voices) from Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor, "Vesti la giubba" from Leoncavallo's Pagliacci, and arias from Boito's Mephistoles, Wagner's Tristan and Isolde, von Flotow's Martha. Jazz fans will revel in a couple of numbers performed by Benny Goodman, the first, "All the Cats Join In", with his orchestra and The Pied Pipers; the second, "After You've Gone", with a quartet comprising himself, Cozy Cole, Teddy Wilson and Sid Weiss. The King's Men sing "The Martins and the Coys"; the Ken Darby Chorus, "Blue Bayou" (the accompanying animation was originally executed for Fantasia where it was set to the music of Debussy's "Clair de Lune" which of course it suits much more happily); Andy Russell, "Without You"; Jerry Colonna narrates and sings "Casey at the Bat"; Dinah Shore sings "Two Silhouettes"; the Andrews Sisters, "Johnny Fedora and Alice Blue Bonnet"; Sterling Holloway narrates "Peter and the Wolf" by Serge Prokofiev.COMMENT: A very mixed bag indeed. And not only musically. The drawings also vary wildly, from the imaginatively surrealistic "After You've Gone" to the pretty-pretty picture postcard "Blue Bayou", from the frantically cartoon-like "Casey at the Bat" to the inventively view-pointed "Johnny Fedora". Naturally some sequences come across with greater impact than others, but even the more innocuous valleys serve an overall purpose. In all, I thought the movie well up to Disney's usual superlative standards of artistry and entertainment — and so did MMA's very enthusiastic audience of university students and the like, who had previously seen little (if any) animation of such craftsmanship. Unlike most other Disney cartoon features, "Make Mine Music" has, to my knowledge, never been theatrically re-released in its original form. All ten segments were re-issued as shorts, and this is the format in which they are usually aired on television. Fortunately, the good news is that the Disney DVD has restored the film to its original brilliance.

SlyGuy21 They clearly tried to capture lightning in a bottle twice here. "Fantasia" was great, it was revolutionary for it's time and it still stands up to this day. This on the other hand is just forgettable. Some of the shorts are OK, but the majority of them just exist. The same goes for the music as well. I don't think comparing this to "Fantasia" is out of order either, they both follow the same structure. While "Fantasia" had well known/engaging music, this has music that just drags on because a lot of the shorts don't have stories. It feels like they took a bunch of random songs and added animation to them, compared to "Fantasia" where the animation actually matched the music. The animation's the best part of this, just stick to "Fantasia".

Vimacone Make Mine Music is one of the package features that Disney released in the 1940's to get by during the war and tough economic times. These films aren't too well known today by the General public, but many will recognize the short stories within as they were reissued separately in later years.Make Mine Music is a collection of ten stories of different music and moods and styles. It's like Fantasia but with then contemporary music. In fact 2 segments were actually leftovers from Fantasia. The Animation for Blue Bayou was originally set to Clair de Lune and Peter and the Wolf was planned for Fantasia. My favorite segments are All the Cats Join In, Two Silhouettes, and Peter And the Wolf. Two Silhouettes kinda has a similar mood to the song Colors of the Wind at times. After You've Gone is very impressive. Word of caution, the first segment, The Martins and the Coys has been cut from all VHS and DVD releases in North America.Make Mine Music is a lesser known gem from the Disney canon that will sure to joy any Disney enthusiast

Foux_du_Fafa Unable to initially return to making true animated features like "Pinocchio" and "Bambi" after the Second World War, Disney turned to making "package features". Like "Fantasia", these films strung together various shorts and featurettes into a feature-length anthology. Between their release in the 1940s and the DVD age, these films were rarely, if ever, shown in their entirety. Instead, the individual segments were re-released as stand-alone pieces, some of which became quite popular. It's understandable why this was done. Whereas the individual elements of "Fantasia" have a similar enough artistic vision to be kept intact as a single experience, the package features do seem like a line of random, individual shorts that have been strung together. As such, the films can seem quite uneven and somewhat unsatisfying collectively.In particular, "Make Mine Music" stands out as being one of the most inconsistent package features. It consists of ten shorts, all relying heavily on music. Some of the shorts are fairly conventional, story-driven, while others are quite experimental. The real stand-out pieces are "Peter and the Wolf" (initially considered for a sequel/continuation of "Fantasia") and "The Whale Who Wanted to Sing at the Met". The stories are engaging, and they are absolutely charming, although "Peter and the Wolf" relies a bit too much on narration. It comes as no surprise that these two shorts became the film's most famous segments. Special mention should also be given to "Blue Bayou", which uses footage from a deleted segment of "Fantasia" that was to be set to Debussy's "Clair de Lune" (here, though, it's set to a love ballad).Other segments, however, vary. "The Martins and the Coys", which was rather stupidly removed from the American DVD, is not bad but hardly memorable. "After You've Gone", an interlude featuring anthropomorphised musical instruments, means well but falls quite flat, ultimately appearing as not much more than filler. "All the Cats Join In" and "Without You" equally seem like experimental filler, yet both are more successful. "Casey at the Bat", on the other hand, contains too many self-indulgent gags and overly caricatured animation to be of any real artistic or entertainment merit, a fact not helped by Jerry Colona's obnoxious narration. The two other segments, "Johnny Fedora and Alice Bluebonnet" and "Two Silhouettes", are so cutesy that they become nothing but pieces of unadulterated kitsch.Ultimately, the only people I would recommend "Make Mine Music" to would be the people who would only be interested in it - Disney fans and animation buffs. To everyone else, as with a good number of package films, it would probably be best seeing individual segments, which is how these films work best.