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6.3/10
Senior Film Conservator
A definitive 6.3/10 rating for a film that redefined the boundaries of cult cinema. The Pet Store remains a cornerstone of transgressive art.
If you love old-school, slightly chaotic black-and-white cartoons, The Pet Store is absolutely worth seven minutes of your life today. But if you hate rubber-hose logic or get easily annoyed by high-pitched squeaking, you will probably want to skip this one. 🐭
So Mickey gets a job at "Tony's Pet Store" and he is immediately terrible at it. He spends his first few minutes dancing with a broom instead of actually cleaning anything.
I love how Tony the owner is just this giant stereotype who disappears almost immediately from the plot. It is a much more frantic job hunt than the quiet desperation you get in some silent comedies about finding work, like Help Wanted - Male.
Then Minnie shows up, and things get weird. Enter Beppo the Gorila. 🦍
He is sitting in his cage reading a movie magazine with King Kong on the cover. This is such a great, meta joke for 1933 since the real King Kong movie came out the exact same year.
Naturally, Beppo decides to recreate the movie right there in the shop. He grabs Minnie and climbs up a pile of boxes.
It is so silly because the boxes are like three feet high, but the cartoon treats it like he is on top of the Empire State Building. The perspective is totally flat but you just roll with it.
The best part of the whole thing is easily when Mickey rallies the other animals to fight back. It reminds me a bit of the silly, chaotic energy in Jolly Tars where everything just descends into madness.
There is a bird that uses its beak like a machine gun to shoot seeds. It feels incredibly violent for a Disney short but it is hilarious. 🐦
Also, some turtles do this weird marching thing to help out. Some of the animation is surprisingly detailed, like the way the bird cages swing back and forth during the fight.
But then you notice other things, like how Minnie's hat keeps disappearing and reappearing between shots. Oops.
Also, Mickey's voice is so high it could shatter glass here. Walt Disney did the voice himself back then, and you can really feel him straining.
The ending is just pure noise and dust clouds. You can basically smell the wet ink and paint on this one, and I love it for that.
