Robert Reynolds This is an early Disney Mickey Mouse short. There will be spoilers ahead:Mickey is putting on a musical revue (hence the short's title) and it features various acts in addition to our hero, most notably a female pig who "sings" opera and has trouble keeping her clothes on.The animation is by Ub Iwerks and is, as usual, excellent. The gags are typical for a short from the late 1920s. The required outhouse is here, various underwear jokes and so on.Mickey serenades the audience with a song for Minnie, who is watching from a box (literally). The voice isn't Walt's voice and it isn't the voice we typically associate with Mickey, but it's a reasonably good early effort. The studio still hasn't quite found "the sweet spot", but the Flieschers are really the only studio ahead of them at this point.This short is on the Mickey Mouse In Black and White Disney Treasures DVD set and is well worth seeking out.

MartinHafer This is a dancing and singing cartoon with lots of barnyard acts. You'll see chickens, ducks and pigs dance, Mickey and his friends playing in a band and, ultimately, Mickey singing and dancing.Back in 1929, this sort of cartoon apparently went over quite well as there were a lot of similar toons by Disney as well as competing studios. However, when seen today, I can't help but think most folks (especially kids) would be bored to tears by the whole thing. There really is no plot. There aren't any real jokes. And, worst of all, there isn't a whole lot of charm to this short. While I will admit that the cartoon is well made compared to other cartoons of 1929, it just isn't fun or entertaining.

didi-5 'Mickey's Follies' sees cartoonland's favourite mouse putting on a show in true vaudeville style, but this time in the barnyard.So a rooster and a hen dance apache, there is an operatic pig (and a subsequent hoist and underwear gag which would be repeated many times over the live of these shorts), before Mickey introduces his theme song Minnie's Yoo-Hoo. And anyone who has seen the short which presented this song for the Mickey Mouse Club will realise that whoever sang the song in 'Mickey's Follies', it certainly wasn't Walt Disney (who did croak it in the short for the Clubs!).Minnie makes one of her brief appearances here and the short is not without charm. Mickey is still in early design mode as a circular character with rubber legs and arms, but his personality already shines through.

Ron Oliver A Walt Disney MICKEY MOUSE Cartoon.MICKEY'S FOLLIES take place in the barnyard, with Mickey at the piano and the eager participation of many of the farm animals.Very little plot in this early black & white film. The Mouse gets to sing his theme song - "Minnie's Yoo Hoo!" - but not with Walt's voice. That looks like Clarabelle Cow as one of the spectators. Disney's animators have included a full quota of the udder-posterior-underwear gags they loved so well.Walt Disney (1901-1966) was always intrigued by drawings. As a lad in Marceline, Missouri, he sketched farm animals on scraps of paper; later, as an ambulance driver in France during the First World War, he drew figures on the sides of his vehicle. Back in Kansas City, along with artist Ub Iwerks, Walt developed a primitive animation studio that provided animated commercials and tiny cartoons for the local movie theaters. Always the innovator, his ALICE IN CARTOONLAND series broke ground in placing a live figure in a cartoon universe. Business reversals sent Disney & Iwerks to Hollywood in 1923, where Walt's older brother Roy became his lifelong business manager & counselor. When a mildly successful series with Oswald The Lucky Rabbit was snatched away by the distributor, the character of Mickey Mouse sprung into Walt's imagination, ensuring Disney's immortality. The happy arrival of sound technology made Mickey's screen debut, STEAMBOAT WILLIE (1928), a tremendous audience success with its use of synchronized music. The SILLY SYMPHONIES soon appeared, and Walt's growing crew of marvelously talented animators were quickly conquering new territory with full color, illusions of depth and radical advancements in personality development, an arena in which Walt's genius was unbeatable. Mickey's feisty, naughty behavior had captured millions of fans, but he was soon to be joined by other animated companions: temperamental Donald Duck, intellectually-challenged Goofy and energetic Pluto. All this was in preparation for Walt's grandest dream - feature length animated films. Against a blizzard of doomsayers, Walt persevered and over the next decades delighted children of all ages with the adventures of Snow White, Pinocchio, Bambi, Peter Pan and Mr. Toad. Walt never forgot that his fortunes were all started by a mouse, or that simplicity of message and lots of hard work always pay off.