Review – Fun and Fancy Free

Emerging from its wartime loss of materials and animators, Disney re-enters the realm of theatrical-release by combining two shorter productions that were originally both supposed to be feature length. The first, “Bongo,” marks one of the rare occasions the studio ever paid royalties to the author of a source story. Alas, Sinclair Lewis’s dumb story about a bear who escapes from a circus rattles on for quite some time without ever supplying enough entertainment to justify its existence. The second half – “Mickey and the Beanstalk” – features a familiar story and stars a trio of familiar characters. Even so, it takes some strange twists (why does the giant have to be a shapeshifter in addition to being huge?). And it gets interrupted frequently by the live-action comedy stylings of Edgar Bergen and his dummies. The result is more nostalgic than it is entertaining. Mildly amusing