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Walt Before Mickey

8/8/2017

2 Comments

 

D+
​1.22

Walt Disney gets a biopic about his early career.

Directed by Khoa Le
Starring Thomas Ian Nicholas, Jon Heder, and Jodie Sweetin
​Initial Review by Chris Cook

Picture
A few rounds ago, my pick was the horrendous Escape From Tomorrow, a low-budget movie that was filmed using guerilla-style tactics at the Walt Disney World theme park; I was intrigued by this because the movie poster had a blood covered Mickey Mouse hand on the front. I decided to select another Disney-related film, Walt Before Mickey—a bio-drama about the struggles of Walt Disney before his creation of the Mouse. After viewing this film, I checked out the film’s Wikipedia page, where I noticed the word “guerilla” in its “Production” section. It reads “… Director Khoa Le talked about the challenges of the project, having been hired at the last minute to direct and having little familiarity with Disney himself. He mentioned, 'I came from a short film background, indie stuff, so I knew how to work efficiently. … For most scenes the actors got only two takes. I had to go back to my grassroots of guerrilla filmmaking.’” After this statement, the quality of the film makes more sense to me. However, the problems with this movie begin before you even consider the film’s production. Can I just mention how horrible the script was?

Starring Henry Rowengartner (Thomas Ian Nicholas) as Walt Disney and Napoleon Dynamite (Jon Heder) as Roy Disney, the movie is based on the book “Walt Before Mickey: Disney’s Early Years, 1919-1928” by Timothy S. Susanin, which I’m pretty sure is better than the movie, if I ever get my hands on it. The film also features Stephanie Tanner (Jodie Sweetin) as Charlotte Disney, who after doing some research, I believe is an entirely fictional character whose only purpose is to type a letter and give one of many “you can do it” encouragement speeches.

It sounds like I’m straight up going to trash this movie, but I’m not. I did find the biographical information about Walt Disney’s early struggles—from his creation of Laugh-O-Gram Studio in Kansas City to his journey to California to create the Disney Brothers Studios—quite interesting. I never knew much about the history of early animation, and the competition to have one’s short films shown in movie theaters. The whole ownership and distribution arrangements between companies also amused me. I also liked how we had a “behind the scenes” perspective of his early Alice Comedies—short cartoons that blended both live action and animation. I don’t remember ever seeing any of them before. I also have to praise that they had “what happened to such-and-such character” segments before the ending credits, with photographs of the real individuals. As for films based on real people, I always enjoy when they do that. While I liked the historical portion of the film, I almost wished this had been a straight-up documentary on the life of Walt Disney.

I already mentioned how bad the script was. Some of the actors did okay—some weren’t very good at all—considering what they had to work with. I don’t know if it was the editing, the flow, or what, but I found the movie overall to be very boring. It was like, “Oh, look. Another scene.” Next scene. Next scene. The dialogue was stale and repetitive; how many encouragement speeches were there? And when he was riding the train and saw the shooting star flying over the Mickey Mouse shaped cloud. Really? One of the best parts of the film, in my opinion, was when Walt was practically homeless and paling around with a mouse in his pocket, and his devastation when the mouse runs away.  

Walt Before Mickey wasn’t a good movie, but I won’t go as far as to say it was a “worst movie of the year” kind of film. It was Meh. If not for the noticeable title, if you were to ask me what it was about a few years down the road, I probably wouldn’t remember. One thing I do know is that it was no Saving Mr. Banks. Think I’m giving this one a C-
2 Comments
Drew
8/9/2017 09:01:02 am

Not awful, not great.

Grade: C

Reply
Jon
8/20/2017 03:15:10 am

In his retirement, my dad's become a big reader, particularly of industrial types like George Westinghouse, soon to be brought back into the public sphere this year by way of an Oscar-bait movie. If Alfonso Gomez-Rejon, who's directing said movie called The Current War, wants to know exactly what not to do when adapting the lives of business titans, he should watch Walt Before Mickey. This is a The Room-esque blueprint that commits every possible sin against what a film is supposed to look and sound like. Every decision is wrong or in need of a better one. However, instead of a demented peek into Tommy Wiseau's unique psychology, we get a paint-by-numbers endeavor with no effort behind it whatsoever. Setting aside everything from the useless narration to the stilted dialogue, Walt Before Mickey doesn't even work as entertainment.

Khoa Le and his two writers have apparently never watched a movie or read a novel before. There's a bare minimum expectation about how story arcs are supposed to work. Dad doesn't like his son's choice of profession in the beginning, they have a rapproachment by the end where the Dad tells the son he's proud of him. Initial donor in Walt's business talks about how impressed he is with Walt and gives him a check, then he talks about his disappointment in Walt when the business fails. Roy Disney tells Walt, as a condition of their partnership, not to date coworkers, but Walt can't help himself and their professional relationship is damaged. Instead, these and other threads are only introduced and then dismissed. There's no drama in watching a man known to be successful struggle because it's just a holding pattern. There is drama in who he alienates along the way, but Le makes the most boring choice possible. I'm not even saying that arcs for supporting characters would rescue Walt Before Disney, but something has to bring me in to this story.

If the plot is useless, one can always turn to character, but no one here behaves recognizably. All the roughhousing the writers and animators do is hideously false. The actors can't sell a terrible line to save their lives, so they look like teenagers in a high school play. Everyone keeps giving Ub shit about his hair, but the costume department doesn't even make it look that weird. If every character is going to mention it so often, poof up those locks so everyone involved doesn't look insane. Characters start sentences by saying 'Oh, and...' without any of the surprise that comes with remembering something that you just forgot. The black character who starts half-heartedly clapping when he sees some of Disney's footage pays Walt the most disingenuous compliment in the history of disingenuous compliments. Not only has Le never seen a movie, but he's never had a conversation with someone either.

I hated this extended commercial for cigarettes disguised as a biopic. This is something my parents used to get in the mail from religious organizations that didn't want Hollywood's corrupting ideas and basic competency to taint the youth. Those at least had a point of view. Walt Before Mickey just exists for reasons I doubt anyone involved could explain beyond the need for income. F

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