Don't listen to the negative reviews

A Masterpiece!

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

This is a cute episode. There are two parts. The first involves our hero trying to impress Minnie. She is a shimmy dancer at the Carnival. He runs a hot dog cart but his products seem to be sentient creatures, so how could one eat them. In the second half, we have a serenade as Mickey and a couple of cats try to reach the heart of the fair damsel. It's good fun with some pretty awful early sound, including singing by the cat and mouse.

A little odd cartoon featuring Mickey Mouse, in the first outing where he speaks, trying to impress Minnie the Shimmy Dancer with a serenade at a carnival. Some catchy music here and there, but not much funny stuff to see here. Just a lot of wacky singing and dancing. Grade C

Another of the classic Iwerks/Disney collaborations from Walt Disney productions is this short that, unlike some of the other cartoons that the duo put out in 28/29, actually takes places in two time periods. Sure, it may just be day and night, but that's a small leap forward in the storytelling for Disney, who would usually just make things set in "real" time, far as the continuity went. This is set at a carnival where Mickey Mouse is selling hot dogs - we hear his voice, not sounding really like the Mouse we'd know later, perhaps Disney wasn't sure yet how to do it, like the early Homer Simpson voice work - and Minnie Mouse wants one.The hot dogs, of course, have legs, and little arms, and can bite and be spanked when they're bad (!) so that's really the highlight here. The second half has Mickey trying to win Minnie over by having two cats "serenade" (really badly, of course) while he strums his guitar. The cat stuff goes on a bit too long - I might've liked actually full story with just the hot dogs, do they rebel, how can they eat the little cartoon hot dogs, oh, no wait, they're cartoons too, guess it makes sense - but it's still magical comedic stuff, genuine and just dumb-silly stuff.

A Walt Disney MICKEY MOUSE Cartoon.Mickey, THE KARNIVAL KID, woos Minnie the Shimmy Dancer.Full of the quirky humor of artist Ub Iwerks, this very enjoyable black & white film is a delight. Despite its age, the animation has an unexpected panache, with Mickey's hot dogs stealing the show. Look for an early cameo by Clarabelle Cow as the bovine attached to the balloon. Mickey's voice does not sound like Walt Disney this time.Walt Disney (1901-1966) was always intrigued by drawings. As a lad in Marceline, Missouri, he sketched farm animals on scraps of paper; later, as an ambulance driver in France during the First World War, he drew comic figures on the sides of his vehicle. Back in Kansas City, along with artist Ub Iwerks, Walt developed a primitive animation studio that provided animated commercials and tiny cartoons for the local movie theaters. Always the innovator, his ALICE IN CARTOONLAND series broke ground in placing a live figure in a cartoon universe. Business reversals sent Disney & Iwerks to Hollywood in 1923, where Walt's older brother Roy became his lifelong business manager & counselor. When a mildly successful series with Oswald The Lucky Rabbit was snatched away by the distributor, the character of Mickey Mouse sprung into Walt's imagination, ensuring Disney's immortality. The happy arrival of sound technology made Mickey's screen debut, STEAMBOAT WILLIE (1928), a tremendous audience success with its use of synchronized music. The SILLY SYMPHONIES soon appeared, and Walt's growing crew of marvelously talented animators were quickly conquering new territory with full color, illusions of depth and radical advancements in personality development, an arena in which Walt's genius was unbeatable. Mickey's feisty, naughty behavior had captured millions of fans, but he was soon to be joined by other animated companions: temperamental Donald Duck, intellectually-challenged Goofy and energetic Pluto. All this was in preparation for Walt's grandest dream - feature length animated films. Against a blizzard of doomsayers, Walt persevered and over the next decades delighted children of all ages with the adventures of Snow White, Pinocchio, Dumbo, Bambi & Peter Pan. Walt never forgot that his fortunes were all started by a mouse, or that childlike simplicity of message and lots of hard work always pay off.