The movie Walt Before Mickey shows the life and struggles of Walt Disney before his fame and the character, Mickey Mouse, that brought him so much fortune. Before I begin my review, I want to say that although this movie is not a documentary, most or almost of the movie is based off true facts and is almost parallel to Disney’s life. The only thing that really took away from this movie was the lack of emotion in the actors, and pretty boring screenwriting. Most of the lines seem like they were taken straight out of a biography about Walt Disney.
Anyway, the movie starts off with a few scenes that show Walt’s life as a young boy and shows how art was something that interested him at a young age. It shows him doodling on his father’s barn at a young age and how he connected with the farm animals, which would be an influence to Disney’s cartoons later in his life. During these scenes, the narrator, which is an older Walt Disney, does mention how his father taught him about hard work and being persistent to finish what you started. However, that connection can’t really be seen in the actors and the father actually comes off as kind of abusive and cruel despite the narrator saying otherwise. The movie continues accurately along with Walt Disney’s timeline, his father gets sick and is forced to sell the farm and move to Kansas city. The teenage years of Walt Disney are briefly explained by the narrator in an interlude; Walt Disney becomes interested in animation at a young age when he learns that each frame is just a drawing which is something he loves to do, he goes to war in France as a part of the red cross, and then moves in with his older and most supportive brother Roy after the war.
Roy gets Walt a job at a local advertising company where he meets his life long friend and soon to be business partner, Ub Iwerks. They both get laid off as a result of the company’s financial trouble. Both distraught but eager to pursue their passion, they come together and form Laugh-O-Grams studios, making animated short films from news headlines. Even though there isn’t much emotion when the two talk, this is one of the only times you can see a real connection between characters, which was probably necessary for the movie because it is well know that Iwerks was the one of the few who stuck by Disney through all his bumps and roadblocks. This is supported when Laugh-O-Gram studios goes bankrupt and Iwerks sticks around with Walt, even though they aren’t making any money.
One scene that did have a lot of emotion and seemed to be realistic was when Walt finds out he doesn’t own the rights to Oswald the Duck, his famous character that he thought was his key to success. When he signed a contract to work on Alice Comedies for Mintz and Winkler, a husband and wife who owned and created Felix the Cat, he failed to realize he also gave them his copyright to Oswald the Duck. Mintz then signed almost all of Disney’s animators to his own animation company. The only animator that stuck by Disney was his close friend Iwerks. Disney is visibly upset during and after this scene; he storms out of the meeting and returns to his studio, where he throws around all of his materials in anger. This failure was what led to the creation of Mickey Mouse, which was originally named Mortimer. Disney’s wife did not like the name and suggested Mickey; facts that the movie makes sure to account for. However, the movie tries to suggest that Disney came up with the mouse idea from his bond that he formed with a mouse found in his studio early in the movie. During his first bankruptcy, there is a few scenes where Disney is shown talking to and feeding the mouse. He loses the mouse on the street one day when an officer confronts him about resting on the side of the street. During the encounter the mouse is startled and runs away, never to be seen again. Walt Disney begins hysterically crying as a result and seems to be broken. However, there is no historical proof that Disney ever had a pet mouse that inspired his idea of Mickey Mouse. He actually came up with the idea during a train ride in response to the loss of his Oswald the Duck character.Mickey Mouse was then perfected by Iwerks, but the movie never touches on this.
Overall, I think this movie is a great summary of Walt Disney’s road to success, but the poor acting makes it hard to connect with Disney and other characters in the movie. And Disney’s relationship with the mouse makes him seem kind of crazy, which I suspect was added into the film because the director did not want to focus on the fact that Mickey Mouse was created in anger after Disney lost the rights to Oswald. The film does a good job of showing how the animation works with a scene showing Walt Disney creating one of his animations by taking a picture of multiple drawings one after another with a hand crank camera. I also enjoyed the scenes where they showed how they worked in live action into their animations by filming a real person and shouting out instructions on how to react to the cartoons and characters who aren’t actually there, but will be drawn in later.The movie is very informative but definitely not something that will be memorable.
