#sandwitches

Ghoul Friend

This is easily the most wholesome of this batch, a simple fun premise with a really sweet ending. Mickey's car ends up out of gas in the middle of the woods. And he just missed the charming little cabin with an old tape recorder. Wonder what it says?

So Mickey needs help and Goofy provides it. This time though Goofy is a zombie. When I heard the premise of this , having not seen this one before, I assumed it'd be like house of mouse, a g-g-g-host or some harmless disney style zombie. Instead.. well look at him. Look at him. Look at my gross beautiful boy. They made the most horrifically dissgustin yet hilarously awkward looking Goofy Zombie they could and i'm proud of them.

It's something I love about these shorts: They do take after 90's shock cartoons sometimes like Ren and Stimpy but get how to do that sort of thign right. Goofy here is gross looking.. but you get a lot of fun little touches like the constant cloud of flies, the bone sticking up thorugh his nose, or how he has some flesh and at least one eye. It's horrifying and gnarly and I love it.

The short just wouldn't be as fun without it. Mickey getting scared at goofy but he's ghost flavored would've just been eh. Mickey being terrified of a genuinely creepy looking Goofy who we can tell isn't actually trying to harm him.. that's genius. You can tell even before the reveal at the end, he was just offering his bone arm as a wrench, a very goofy move, he's not trying ot harm mickey, but you can understand mickey's knee jerk reaction: I'ts not zombie racisim, he's just found a corpse that walks and dosen't know how to process it and then said corpse chases him.

Yet once Mickey is saved by his new friend and realized "Oh shit i'm the dick" he gladly takes him along in a super sweet ending. It keeps the heart of mickey while still letting him get into slapstick nonsense with a return of the living dead zombie for 3 minutes. Genius.

Potatoland

Potatoland might be my favorite of these shorts. It's so funny from start to finish and so rich in the characters, using the classic Mickey, Donald Goofy trinity in a fresh way.

Instead of an odd job as House of Mouse HEAVILY leaned on for it's shorts with these three, Potatoland instead uses what makes each of them unqiue to create a really funny yet also really sweet story.

In this case Goofy is taking the boys to Potatoland, an amusment park he thought he saw advertised every year when he and his family went on road trips. I also like the road trip aspect: While this Goofy dosen't have Max, it is nice to still subtley nod to the good memories that drove him to take that faithful roadtrip with his son. That and Wallace Shawn's gaslighting but that's understandably a non factor here.

The initial punchline that it's just a sign for idaho "America's Potato Land" is brilliant. Such a good joke and I love that Goofy has seen it.. every night in his dreams. That delivery is a meme for a reason, Bill Farmer may be fantastic at dramatic stuff, but he deserves praise for his comedic timing too. The Ruddish Shorts really let him show off his comedic range, that yes Goofy is heavily slapstick, but the character's vocal reactions can be just as funny as can how he says stuff.

This short could've really coasted on Goofy alone but what makes it special is that all three charcters really pitch in. We get easily the best joke of the Ruddish shorts as after Goofy knocks himself unconcious, Donald's reactoin is just "Well, Goodbye". Mickey's response is to stretch his arm through the glovebox, steal the keys and make them dissapear like a magician. The animation here is so perfect, every frame is great and funny and Donald's reaction somehow tops it all. A beat then a very disgruntled but still very casual "HEY!" like someone just stole his sandwitch and not his best friend just broke the laws of space and time to keep him here. I also love mickey's "We didn't drive four days without stopping to eat or rest to not make Goofy's dream come true and it will. Come True. " Dimatopolis might be the best Mickey Mouse, getting the characters spirit down, but getting to go far broader and more unhinged while keeping it in that aw shucks range.

They made the right call wtih Mickey's characterization in these shorts: They border on parodying his modern sachrine sweetneess but in a way that never gets annoying or overdone. He's just so damn genuine and kind but really fucking out of step with reality. HE does the right thing but will go to insane lengths to achieve it. Like spongebob but not feeling like a knockoff of him, as he's slightly less childish and more just painfully optimistic, taking Goofy's sarcastic suggestion to build potatoland as fact. I never noticed the spongebob energy of these shorts before getting to this part of the review, but it's there that mix of geniuine heart and batshit insanity. It's beautiful

The jokes in the potatoland segment itself are great, just a few easy piss takes at disney itself making it look like disneyland. The haunted mansion bit is my faviorite as Donald just casually says boo and gets the piss beat out of him.

Eventually Goofy does find out but Mickey makes it clear what they did and Goofy naturally is heartwarmed.. then they have to run because MIckey built this place out of potatoes and gravy and the gravy is collapsing. heartfelt yet utterly batshit creative in it's exuection. This short is the whole package.

Third Wheel

Third Wheel is the weakest of this batch. It's not even close. The other segments are all really funny and have a great idea for them. This one is just "What if Goofy couldn't take the hint Mickey and Minnie are on a date?" and it's that joke almost every time. Seeing Goofy be an accidental jackass to Mickey and Minnie while snooty people sush mickey for getting upset till he finally rightfully tells them "No you shush motherfucker" with the motherfucker only with us in spirit because disney channel is just not good. The animation is great, but it's great one very one of these shorts. The only part I really find funny is the above, as Minnie's stomach silloute is geninely funny and I love how even her flower pokes out and Mickey chewing Goofy out is funny. Them making out in his stomach is just plain weird and I don't much care for it, but it's a bit more than the rest of the short really tried. it tries to use great animatoin on a story and jokes "Oh he lit the table on fire' that mostly aren't there. Goofy as a cowboy was pretty funny, goofy eating minnie was funny

But overall it's just not enough and when you don't have enough jokes for a three minute short, you probably needed to scrap it.

Goofy's First Love:

This one is also a pretty stock plot but the diffrence is simple

Third Wheel is the stock sitcom plot, at a time where it's been done enough to; judge it for it mostly played straight just with some slapstick that just isn't good enough and is more grating than funny.

Goofy's First Love takes a very stock plot and is hilaroius with it. The premise, someone in the main cast has a crush and their friends try to help but have no idea what the fuck their doing, is one that's popped up in just about every show. From the New Archies to My Little Pony Friendship is Magic to Amphibia to Smiling Friends, everyone's tried this. Yet it's malliable enough to work and be really diffrent. While the New Archies had the really standard take it did it with BOTH sides having a mutual crush. MLP's version, which I just watched, had Big Mac rely on children who drugged him once and stock fairy tale cliches to combat Justin Beiber but he's a horse and realize a simple gesture that actually knows the person is better than trying to do some over the top bullshit. Amphibia avoids the screw ups and just has everyone trying to teach Hop Pop to dance so he can get laid. And Smiling Friends injects it with drugs as Charlie has nothing but horrible advice, the girl turns out not to be the one he actually just got dumped by, and the guy their helping looks like this, all while also giving us the darkest and funneist joke imaginable

How even on adult swim they got away with this I don't know.

I do bitch about stock plots sometimes, so I wanted to make it clear; I'm fine with them if you can have fun with them or do something fresh with them. This one in paticular shows that this seemingly worn out premise can be REALLY funny in the right hands.

The people behind these shorts are the right hands. It keeps to the basic formula with Goofy seemingly crushing on a waitress who looks exactly like him. And it's not a case of them not designing Clarabelle yet, she's in the wedding scene at the end. They just likelky realized it was funnier to go girl goofy and have Donald think she's REALLY hot and too good for him. Donald... you.. you may want to talk to Therapist Jones about this. Nothing wrong with being attracted to men or goofy, he fucks, or women who look like goofy, she likely also fucks, but being horny for your best friend is something you need to have a talk about.

So they try: Mickey just tries makeovers using minnie's makeup and I love the later payoff where she comes in and asks if he's been playing with her makeup again, and thanks to Donald we get our first apperance of Scrooge McDuck, whose even voiced by Alan Young! It really warms my heart to hear him again. I miss him. He throws donald out for asking for a million dollars. They even try the gym like Charlie, it just comes off less hypocritical as while both built like stick figures, Donald and Mickey are indeed jacked no matter the continuity. This leads to Goofy ping ponging around the world in a truly wonderous sequence of him ping ponging around, getting kicked out by scrooge's massive butler again, bouncing off minnie.

Eventually they go with be yourself.. adn the msot deranged ending possible. While Goofy was defintely after the sandwitch, that part of the punchline is easy to figure out it's how far they take it that makes it work. He just shoves the waitress aside, Mickey and Donald look shocked.. and then it cuts to goofy SINCERLY marrying a sandwich with his ex, some other goof and Scrooge all in attendance and Minnie and Daisy starring on awwing as brides maids. It's possibly the funneist ending of these shorts, just so damn crack. It again contrasts the previous short: that endings kinda gross and just weird. This one is a tiny bit gross, a lot weird and really damn funny. Easily the second best love story between a man and a sandwich i've ever seen in a cartoon

Good Sports

I picked Good Sports for a simple reason: it's this series version of one of those how to or sports shorts goofy done does so well. Mickey does the narration here and I do think it looses something not being Corey Burton's melodious voice as the narrator, but not enough to make it horrible or anything. That classy contrast to Goofy's nonsense is just part of the secret sauce of these things so the narration bits aren't quite as funny.

It still works on the whole as they try to adapt it to mickey: The two teams of goofies are blatantly cheating and he's trying ot teach them not to. Mickey does moral outrage better than helen lovejoy and his utter suprise when they decide to keep cheating at first is great as are all the vsiual gags above, like the player one of the goofs pantsed never picking his pants up or the tiny one.

It's mostly just fun slapstick with cheating , being a good sport or showing being a showboating cheating jackass just gets you beat the hell up, ending with a group hug. But they can stop now. Guys you can stop now this part of the review is over. Guy

Outta Time

I had to do this one as just the premise Kevin told me this one had, that Goofy changes all of history to be goofs is funny. I wish they did more with it, showed more named characters goofiied besides preofesosr drake (You can't do Mickey and Donald as they have to go back in time to fix this). I'ts also hilarous that Goofy just being around for ffive minutes makes all the dinosaurs and cave men goofs. It's a fun high concept sci fi romp.

It also has Donald dragged along just because Mickey says so, despite having done nothing wrong. Mickey told Goofy the bathroom was 'over there" so he could watch a laser cut grilled cheese. I mean I would too but I wouldn't drag donald into it. This also horrifically and hilaroiuslly backfires; while donald does rescue goofy easily just grabbing him and running after he becomes god emperor of cave man times, his ass falling off, and Mickey's racist joke about duck tape, woo oo, end sup playing off. WHile Donald's butt falling off is okay to me, reminds me of bloom county doing similar gags decades earlier.

The result is well worth it... Donald's ass was left in the past

DONALD DUCK'S ASS DESTROYED TIME AND SPACE

They even went back before goofy time traveld to prevent him form needing to take a whiz, but it's too late. Everyone has a donald ass face.. until someone fixes it. Oh let's say minnie. But it's the most glorious ending imaginable. 5 stars, flawless greater than great.

All in all a great bunch of shorts and one that's meh, not a bad spread and proof goofy can do anything and that donald's ass can destroy time and space.