Item: Touchdown Mickey
Rating: 6.6
Author: Archivist John

If you have six minutes to spare today, yes, Touchdown Mickey is absolutely worth your time. Anyone who loves old-school animation where characters stretch like rubber bands will have a blast. But if you are looking for a deep story or actual football rules, you will probably hate this 1932 relic. 🏈

The whole thing is just pure, unadulterated chaos from start to finish. Mickey is leading his team against the Alley Cats, who are basically giant, terrifying monsters. Seriously, some of these cats look like they want to actually eat Mickey, not just tackle him.

There is no real plot here, just a series of increasingly bizarre physical gags. At one point, a player gets flattened into a pancake. Another guy just pumps him back up with a bicycle pump like it is nothing. I love this era of Disney where they did not care about realism at all.

The sound design is where the real magic happens. You can hear Walt Disney himself doing Mickey's squeaky little voice. And Pinto Colvig, the guy who did Goofy, makes some of the most ridiculous grunt noises you will ever hear.

It kind of reminds me of those goofy silent comedies from around that time, like Hot Dogs, where the energy is just dialed up to eleven. Everything moves so fast that if you blink, you miss a gag.

For example, there is a random goat in the crowd. It eats a tin can and then literally rings like a telephone. Why? Who knows, but it made me laugh out loud.

The actual football game makes zero sense. Mickey ends up carrying about twenty players on his back while plowing through the mud. The field seems to go on for miles, like a desert. It is way more exciting than some of the serious dramas from back then, like The Michigan Kid, because it just wants to have fun.

Sometimes the animation gets a bit messy. The background characters in the bleachers are basically just black blobs vibrating. It looks incredibly cheap if you stare too hard at it.

But the main action is so fluid. Mickey's tail has a mind of its own during the plays. It is beautifully weird.

Basically, it is just a really fun time. It does not try to teach you a lesson or make you cry. It just wants to show a mouse getting smashed into the dirt and then winning the big game.