OllieSuave-007
A Silly Symphony where a piper saves a town from rat infestation. However, he gets mad and takes revenge when the King refuses to pay him. Lots of singing and sappy songs, with weird-acting characters and over-imaginative scenes. Definitely one of the more whimsical cartoons from Disney.Grade C+
utgard14
This early Disney Technicolor short, part of the Silly Symphonies series, tackles the old story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin. The story is the one most of us know - town is overrun by rats so the town leaders hire the Piper to lure the rats out of town. He does this but they refuse to pay him, leading the Piper to exact his revenge in a manner that has creepier undertones these days than it did when this was made. Anyway, this is a good cartoon version of the story and teaches kids valuable lessons about paying your debts and the power of wind instruments. I guess it also teaches kids if a strange man shows up playing a flute you should follow him because he'll lead you to Toyland. The animation is very good, especially the backgrounds. The color is just gorgeous. The music is lively. All of the voice work is fine. Really not much bad to say about it except that, while it's good, it's not great.
MartinHafer
The Pied Piper of Hamelin is a hard-edged story about honoring your commitments. This is because what exactly happened to the kids at the end was always kind of vague. For all we know, the Piper was a pedo or fed the kids to a dog food company! But since this is a cartoon for kids and comes from Disney, they weren't about to allow the story to go that way! The artwork was okay--not up to the standards of many of the better Silly Symphonies but still much better than the competition. The faces of the characters (especially the kids) are very simple--with little character. And, like some of the Silly Symphonies, this one has quite a bit of singing--a definite minus. But what bothered me is, as I said above, the stupid need to make this tough story happy--with the children all being taken to Toy Land AND the little kid who could barely walk being carried into this wonderful world by the nice Piper (in the original, he could not keep up and was left behind). All in all, not a bad cartoon--but it played too fast and loose with the original story to be of more interest.
Neil Doyle
This Silly Symphonies cartoon begins with a graphic example of how rats are overpowering Hamelin Town, all to the tune of a spirited song about the little creatures. The mayor of the city offers a bag of gold to anyone who will help the townspeople get rid of all the rats. The Pied Piper turns up, announcing he'll reduce the overrun rat population and accept the bag of gold for reward. Next thing you know, the little critters are all following him down a country road far away from town and he's ready to return for his gold. "I've done my work as I was told and now I'll take my bag of gold." The Mayor refuses to carry out the bargain and the townspeople say all he did was play a tune, so the Piper declares he'll remove all the children of the town from their influence. And so, he woos them off to a childhood paradise where they can sing and play rather than be used as little more than hard-worked servants by their parents.Charming animation helps make it a morality tale with a happy ending.
AD
