Four Times Mickey Mouse Was Actually Funny
While I do have some affection for Mickey Mouse as a character, he’s almost never made me laugh. Whereas nearly every Looney Tunes short has laugh-out-loud moments that are still funny today, Mickey, at his best, is usually cute and adventurous but never quite funny. In fact, at his worst, he’s downright dull.
On occasion, however, Mickey has been very funny. Here are four such examples…
The 2013 ‘Mickey Mouse’ TV Show
In this 2013 cartoon series — simply named Mickey Mouse — Mickey is still adventurous and a spunky optimist, but it’s turned up to 11 in a hilarious, almost SpongeBob-esque way. His heroics extend to him being gung-ho about everything and often dragging his friends — and himself — into danger. He’s a bit more impatient as well, which nicely compliments his relentless energy. The shorts themselves also have a darkly comedic vibe to them that’s surprising for Disney.
In almost anything with the core Disney characters, Donald and Goofy provide the funniest moments, but in this show, they’re outshined by the happy, absent-minded and deeply weird Mickey.
‘Runaway Brain’
For four whole decades, Disney played it so safe with Mickey that they barely put him in anything. But that changed in 1995 with the horror-themed Runaway Brain, Disney’s first theatrical Mickey short since 1953. In it, Mickey is a young adult slacker who needs to quickly raise money to buy Minnie an anniversary gift, which is why he allows himself to be experimented on for science and swaps his brain with that of a giant monster.
Runaway Brain was edgy, wacky and violent, and it seemed to scare Disney off of taking any more chances with Mickey. Reports of it being “banned” are exaggerated, but it’s certainly controversial.
‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit’
Mickey’s cameo in Who Framed Roger Rabbit is fantastic. As private eye Eddie Valiant falls off a skyscraper, he runs into Bugs and Mickey skydiving together. Valiant asks them if they have a spare parachute, but he only asks for “a spare.” Mickey tells him “Bugs does,” but Bugs warns him, “I don’t think you want it.” Valiant insists, and Bugs proceeds to hand him a totally useless spare tire as Valiant continues to plummet to the ground.
Bugs, of course, is as snarky as ever, but Mickey is subtly mischievous here, too. After all, he’s the one to offer up Bugs’ spare, as well as telling Bugs to “let (Valiant) have it.”
‘Steamboat Willie’
I recently watched Mickey’s first short, “Steamboat Willie” from 1928, for the first time. I was stunned to find myself laughing out loud throughout much of it. As opposed to the cute, bouncy, personality-less Mickey I was expecting, Mickey was an obnoxious mischief-maker who was only concerned with his own amusement. Especially funny were all the terrible ways he made music with various animals, like swinging around a cat by its tail and choking a goose to use it as a bagpipe.
Just as with the 2013 shorts, no matter how much Disney might not want it to be true, it’s hard to deny the fact that jerk Mickey is by far the funniest Mickey.