THE PRINCE & THE PAUPER (1990)

RELEASE DATE: Friday 16th November 1990

SYNOPSIS: This short movie is based on Mark Twain's fictional novel about Prince Edward VI (that's Henry VIII's son - the one that died young) who, in the story, switches place with a penniless pauper who just so happens to look exactly like him. Only in this version, the prince and pauper are both played by Mickey Mouse!

This film is along the same lines as Mickey's Christmas Carol. It condenses a story into 25 minutes so that it can be played alongside a full-length feature. In 1990 this film debuted at the start of The Rescuers Down Under. It is notable for being the last time Disney used their Xerox ink-and-paint format for animation. After this they moved on to the C.A.P.S. system whereby the frames would be scanned and coloured in computer.

IRVYNE: I had never actually seen this short before this year, funnily enough. It's quite a cute little piece, but I wouldn't say it's a classic.

It is quite amusing to hear Mickey Mouse speak with an English accent! It reminds me of when I visitied Tokyo DisneySea a couple of years ago. Hearing Mickey, Donald and Goofy all speak in Japanese was incredibly bizarre!

I don't know if anyone noticed, but there aren't any female lead characters in this! I understand that's par for the course when you're adapting old stories like this, but surely they could have squeezed Minnie or Daisy in there somewhere! At least Pluto gets a bit of airtime; he probably hadn't been animated in decades! It must have been exciting for the animators to be drawing these classic characters that they had grown up with.

The animation is actually really nice. I almost expected since it was just a "short" that it would T.V. level animation, but it's not. The characters all move really well and even though it's fairly simple, it looks very nice.

Overall, a nice little movie that will likely be forgotten in the sands of time, but it's entertaining for what it is.