User Reviews

Mickey is at home reading Jonathan Swift's "Gulliver's Travels" when the 11 mice children he's watching start making a ruckus. To keep them quiet, he tells them a story based on the Lilliputian portion of the book (the book, by the way, has to do with several lands--not just the one in which Gulliver is a giant). In this case, he tells a pretty tall tale--telling them that the story was true and happened to him. He then tells about being shipwrecked in a strange land where he was a giant and the little people all attacked him--assuming he was coming to hurt them. However, a giant spider then attacks and it's Mickey to the rescue--beating up the spider and saving everyone. Obviously one of the little mice doesn't believe all this and plays a cute joke on Mickey--and Mickey, good naturedly, laughs along with everyone.

Overall, this is a very good cartoon in every way. The animation (as always with a Disney cartoon) is great but the story is also a lot of fun. And, the ending really worked to tie it all together. Lots of fun and a cartoon I heartily recommend.

By the way, the same style of story is told in "Giantland"--another film where Mickey is caring for this huge brood of mice. This time, however, he retells Jack and the Beanstalk--with him, naturally, in the role of Jack.

. . . to grow into a Monster Too Big to Assail during this brief cartoon, GULLIVER MICKEY. To Hitler-mustached Evil Genius Walt Disney (aka, the Real Life Voice of Mickey Mouse), business rivals, law enforcement, John Q. Public, and U. S. Congress People were ALL Lilliputians, to be treated like the nonentities he thought that they were. Der Fuhrer Disney would settle for nothing less than a Disneyland--and then, Horrors!--a Disney World! Realizing that his name would outlive both himself and Existing Copyrights as set forth by the Magna Carta, Adolf--Er, Walt--cooked up a Perpetual Motion Congressional Bribery Machine, so that a feckless parade of American senators, presidents, and alleged "People's" representatives would Declare a Thousand-Year Disney Reich unassailable by Mortal Man. GULLIVER MICKEY simply chortles sadistically as Americans give it all they've got to wrest control of THEIR stolen birthright from this Godzilla Mouse Monster. At least hundreds of cannonballs bounce off Mickey harmlessly as he grabs more defenseless Little People than Harvey Weinstein could in 10 lifetimes. Getting suckers to PAY to watch Cultural Rapist GULLIVER MICKEY while screwing actual Gulliver creator Jonathan Swift's Estate out of their last uneaten baby is what Arch-Demon Disney called a "Two-Fer."

This is a black and white Mickey Mouse cartoon produced by Disney studio. There will be spoilers ahead:

Once again, Mickey inserts himself into a fictional tale in order to entertain orphan mice, as in Giantland. This one works quite a bit better than Giantland was, mostly because the plot makes sense.

There are, as is typical for a Disney short, some very nice visuals and some funny gags. Mickey winds up falling asleep, only to wake up tied down and with tiny people climbing around on him. He easily frees himself and has no problems defending himself against attacks which, to him, are more playing than fighting, though the smaller people view it differently.

There's a great sequence in the water with sailing ships firing on Mickey and Mickey still playing. Various other things happen until a spider bearing a resemblance to Pegleg Pete shows up. The spider is a threat to the tiny village and Mickey starts fighting the spider. They go a few rounds until a dissolve into Mickey punching a pillow in front of the orphans. The ending is cute, so I won't spoil it here.

This short is available on the Disney Treasures Mickey Mouse in Black and White, Volume One and both the short and the set are well worth finding. Most recommended.

"Gulliver Mickey" is a 1934 black-and-white short film by Walt Disney. The world's most famous mouse was already 5 years old back then and almost as big of a star as he is over 80 years later. The title already tells that this is a parody of the famous Jonathan Swift tale. And this is also why I found the story fairly interesting with Mickey being in the country of small people. Unfortunately the humor was not on par this time. It's basically 9 minutes of jokes on how Mickey is so much taller than everybody else and how he constantly has cannonballs fired at him, which are the size of peas. In the end another giant, actually a spider, shows up and he looks exactly like Mickey's usual antagonist in these short films. The two fight and then the action switches back to the orphanage where Mickey tells the story of Gulliver Mickey as we also see already at the beginning of this film. In my opinion, one of the weaker early Mickey Mouse sad films as the comedy just did not really click with me in this one. Not recommended.

. . . the shooting irons needed to neutralize one mere rodent? This is the illogical puzzle posed by GULLIVER MICKEY. Every Fourth of July, the Boston Pops Orchestra used to play the Quaker Oats Overture (aka, 1812). It concluded with chimes and cannons, but no one was ever hurt because the artillery apparently was obtained from this cartoon. Lastly, as anyone familiar with the source material well knows, actors cannot do Gulliver without the firehose scene. GULLIVER MICKEY breaks this fifth wall commandment, which is tantamount to Paramount releasing a film without showing any mountains in the opening credits.

It has been said that after watching the 1939 adaptation of "Gulliver's Travels" by the Fleischer Studio, Walt Disney said that "We can do better than that, with our second-string animators!" If we should judge this opinion based on Disney's actual work upon Jonathan Swift's classic, which is this animation short, our judgement would not be truly positive. To be honest, the Fleischer Studio's adaptation is really better than this one. Its first notable weakness is the lack of any thematic statements, which makes this animation short a "simply entertaining" one. The second, is its incomplete plot. What we see here is a one-act plot which even can be seen as just a sketch. The ironic fact is that the best aspect of this animation short is exactly its incomplete plot! Unlike the 1939 movie, here we don't have a work of art claiming to be an adaptation of Swift's novel; and since this is not a completed plot, there are not any other settings of Swift's novel here (including Gulliver's other travels). Instead, we find Mickey reading "Gulliver's Travels" at home. Then we watch a bunch of mice orphans who are playing in Mickey's living room, so he decides to play the role of Lemuel Gulliver for them. This is why we find him in Lilliput. This literary device makes it possible to create another story within the main story, which is a strong and antique narrative technique, and certainly is an advantage comparing to Fleischer Studio's adaptation which was made 5 years later (That was a lovely and memorable animation movie, but I cannot accept it as an "adaptation" of Swift's classic). As a result, we see that the climax of the second story (Mickey is fighting Pete in Lilliput) shifts to the falling action of the first story (Mickey is telling a story to the mice orphans at home). Besides, we have a little mouse who -unlike the other mice orphans- is the external observer of Mickey's narrative, and finally makes the first story's denouement, as brings him a toy spider that frightens him a lot, and so makes him pay off the reality. Regarding such a technical sketch, I wonder why Disney and his colleagues neither considered any theme for it, nor developed its plot. This animation short could be really better.

P.S. I would like to mention two short shots which are visually considerable: first, when day "breaks" and we see starry night sky as a dark glass which breaks to pieces, and second the rooster who crows on Mickey's body in the morning which somehow reminds me some Pablo Picasso's sketches.