That was an excellent one.

Your blood may run cold, but you now find yourself pinioned to the story.

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

During the 1940's, most of the cartoons in the Goofy series demonstrated, satirically, how to play a sport. These are known as the How to cartoons.This genre was actually inspired by Tex Avery's spot gag cartoons he did at WB. They would feature a droll off-screen narrator explaining or demonstrating the nature of a scene, only for the opposite circumstance to occur. Tex's colleagues credit him for the creation of this device and were honored that they (the Schlesinger studio) influenced Disney's cartoons.The Avery cartoon Screwball Football (1939) seems to be a chief inspiration for this short. The premise, characters, and gags are strikingly similar (the quarterback "barking" his signals is used almost verbatim). The Marx Brothers film Horse Feathers (1932) was also a likely influence as it carries the same kind of sensibility.While Tex used literal and visual humor for shorts like this, Disney's shorts of this genre subtly satirized the many aspects of game play and related cultural elements. (compare this short with Tex's "Batty Baseball", which was released the same year).The original credits, which were discovered a few years ago, show that the main titles were displayed on the scoreboard (Goofy head shot and all).The shorts of this genre have aged well and sports fans will enjoy them.

After your average Disney short - especially one from the 1940's that centers itself around a "how-to" demonstration of a specific sport - it almost feels as if you need a nap or a reassuring breather. The Disney shorts progress at a briskly-paced rate that almost defies all sense and time and even at their average length - a brief seven to eight minutes - they often race by at such an inconceivably quick rate that one needs to take a look at the time again. Jack Kinney's How to Play Football is no exception to the rules and the content and approach is the same as other "how-to" shorts from the global empire that included golf, baseball, and swimming. The film stars Goofy and gives us a simple yet kinetic look at the sport of football through the use of slapstick and anarchy, pitting together Taxidermy Tech against Anthropology A&M in a rousing and lawless game. The short features the trademark and expected traits of Disney's shorts, being very colorful and involving, but also, just plain entertaining and fun.Directed by: Jack Kinney.

With having found Disney's Goofy short film How To Play Golf to be a sharp and witty short movie,I started to hope that Goofy would match his golfing skills when taking on a game of American football.The plot:Showing a football arena to be jammed packed with fans from above,the moves goes down to earth and heads to the pitch,where the players soon reveal that this game is going to be as far away from a "friendly" as you can get.View on the film:Taking over from original voice artist George Johnson,Pinto Colvig gives Goofy an electric spark,which perfectly matches the excellent frantic animation that touches down on the screen.Unlike the previous Goofy shorts,director Jack Kinney gives every single player in the opposing teams their own distinctive look,and rough-edge personality,which leads to this being a Goofy movie that defiantly hits the whole nine yards.

This short, nominated for an Oscar, is likely the best of the sports cartoons Disney did (most of them centered around the lithe, atheletic and graceful Goofy) and is a classic, although Tex Avery was there ahead of them, with Screwball Football in 1939. Tex more than holds his own, but How To Pay Football is hilarious and yet another in a long line of works with which Disney can be justifiably proud. This airs on the Ink and Paint Club periodically. Recommended.