When I signed up for the Alice in Wonderland reading challenge hosted over at Take Me Away, I knew right away what I intended to watch for my "extra" movie. See, I was already planning to watch the Disney Treasures set The Chronological Donald vol. 4, and that includes one of the options, "Donald in Mathmagic Land."
To be honest, this was a very weak cartoon in the set. It's a half hour short that lets us see how math is part of every day life. Bits of it were interesting, but it wasn't really entertaining. This is something you'd see in school, not something to watch for entertainment.
Having said that, there was one part I really enjoyed. It involved a certain set of rules for billards. I wasn't familiar with everything, but the explanation of how the players figure out the angles as well as the real life guy doing the demonstrations was pretty impressive. I wish I had that kind of control over my shots in regular pool.
As to the Alice connections, they were pretty weak. A couple of the creatures that Donald finds in the first minute are obviously taken from Disney's version of the tale that came out several years before, especially the pencil bird. And, as they are talking about the math of chess, they briefly talk about Through the Looking Glass and put Donald in a costume of Disney's Alice.
All told, this isn't something I will be going back to rewatch soon. But it was interesting to see the first time around.
3 comments:
Hm, that's disappointing. Sounded promising!
I don't remember much of the actual show now, but I remember it as one of my favorites as a kid. I watched it probably a dozen times when I was 8-10.
Somewhere, I have a poor-quality over-watched VHS from TV recording.
Hmm, I find some of the old Disney cartoons are a little lacking in general. Sorry it didn't work out for you.
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