A brilliant film that helped define a genre

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

Yes, absolutely, there is fun to be had, as well as many, many things to go boom, all amid an atmospheric urban jungle.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

The Goofy shorts of the 40's are the zaniest cartoons that Disney ever produced. The fact that this kind of zaniness came from Disney is striking, considering from all accounts he was against brash slapstick of the Warner Bros. or MGM sense.Most of Goofy's shorts from this time frame demonstrated, satirically, how to perform an activity, mostly playing a sport as described by an off screen narrator. In this short, the narrator explains to the audience how hockey is a spectator sport, but not in the context you would expect.Like any sport, with an audience of insanely devoted fans, the arena goes out of control. What makes this the craziest Disney short ever produced, is during the chaos, random clips of climatic scenes from previous Disney features and shorts are edited into the excitement (among them Monstro the Whale from Pinocchio). When watching this for the first time, I was reminded of the Pacers and Pistons basketball riot that took place in Detroit only the players didn't attack the fans in this short.If you thought Disney only produced soft and lighthearted adaptations of fairy tales, watch this short and you'll see that they could do a great range of genres.

YET ANOTHER ENTRY in those multi-Goofy how to and sports specials. In this case, it takes on Ice Hockey (Or just "Hockey", as we'd say on the Southside of Chicago). It's manic pace and generously supplied abundance of finely tuned and tailored hockey gags surely must have been a welcome hiatus from the most serious and grim daily War news that had occupied the transcendental over-soul of the World for the previous half decade or so.THE STORY MAKES fine exploitation of every it. The stadium, the rabidly enthusiastic fans, the names of the teams, the official and the break-neck speed of the action all contribute to the fun.IN ONE SENSE, this film must have been both a pleasure to do and also somewhat easier than some others. After all, at its core is lampooning a particular esoteric and highly specialized sector of the Sports World in Hockey and its fans.THE CARTOON ALSO acts as a sort of barometer of the times in illustrating behaviour and practices that were in vogue then, being the mid 1940's of World War II and shortly thereafter. It was a time when the public was just a trifle more formal than now. Our case in point is illustrated so beautifully in the costuming of the spectators portrayed. Simply stated, folks dressed up then. It was suits, ties, nice dresses for the ladies; as opposed to blue jeans & tee shirts of today.BUT THEN AGAIN, on the other hand, we have the game itself. That never does change.

A Walt Disney GOOFY Cartoon.It's HOCKEY HOMICIDE as the Loose Leafs battle the Ant Eaters for the championship.Here is another Goofy Sports film; the animation is routine, but the story is humorous as it skewers the popular icecapade. Doodles Weaver is the highly excitable narrator.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 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 simplicity of message and lots of hard work always pay off.

This could possibly be the greatest cartoon ever made. The usual slapstick comedy found in Goofy cartoons is here combined with the talent of Doodles Weaver as the commentator of this insane hockey nightmare. Like many of Goofy's other outings this cartoon has some great ideas, but this time there is a quiet note of genius in them. You won't have laughed so much at a cartoon since you were a child