Who payed the critics

Good start, but then it gets ruined

A Major Disappointment

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

A Silly Symphony where a piper saves a town from rat infestation. However, he gets mad and takes revenge when the King refuses to pay him. Lots of singing and sappy songs, with weird-acting characters and over-imaginative scenes. Definitely one of the more whimsical cartoons from Disney.Grade C+

This is a color Silly Symphony produced by the Disney studio. There will be spoilers ahead:If you know the basic plot of the poem upon which this is based, then you know the bulk of the story here. But since this was done by Disney, there have been changes to make it less dark in tone in some ways and to make the Pied Piper seem more kindly than simply a disgruntled contractor getting even with someone who cheated him.This is essentially a mini-opera, with everything sung. The rats display more defined character than the humans typically do here and the scenes with the rats are better animated and more interesting.The piper is hired to rid the town of rats, which he does slightly more humanely than the original does (they vanish in a block of cheese instead of drowning) and the piper is cheated by the mayor and the townspeople. He threatens to pipe the children away and the adults mock and deride him. The children are shown as being the only ones who do any work, so being taken is more a liberation than a kidnapping. One change made corrects what I see as an injustice (though I'm biased) and thus I like the ending. The colors are a bit off, but it's technically well done.This short is available on the Disney Treasures More Silly Symphonies DVD set. It's worth getting.

The Pied Piper of Hamelin is a hard-edged story about honoring your commitments. This is because what exactly happened to the kids at the end was always kind of vague. For all we know, the Piper was a pedo or fed the kids to a dog food company! But since this is a cartoon for kids and comes from Disney, they weren't about to allow the story to go that way! The artwork was okay--not up to the standards of many of the better Silly Symphonies but still much better than the competition. The faces of the characters (especially the kids) are very simple--with little character. And, like some of the Silly Symphonies, this one has quite a bit of singing--a definite minus. But what bothered me is, as I said above, the stupid need to make this tough story happy--with the children all being taken to Toy Land AND the little kid who could barely walk being carried into this wonderful world by the nice Piper (in the original, he could not keep up and was left behind). All in all, not a bad cartoon--but it played too fast and loose with the original story to be of more interest.

This Silly Symphonies cartoon begins with a graphic example of how rats are overpowering Hamelin Town, all to the tune of a spirited song about the little creatures. The mayor of the city offers a bag of gold to anyone who will help the townspeople get rid of all the rats. The Pied Piper turns up, announcing he'll reduce the overrun rat population and accept the bag of gold for reward. Next thing you know, the little critters are all following him down a country road far away from town and he's ready to return for his gold. "I've done my work as I was told and now I'll take my bag of gold." The Mayor refuses to carry out the bargain and the townspeople say all he did was play a tune, so the Piper declares he'll remove all the children of the town from their influence. And so, he woos them off to a childhood paradise where they can sing and play rather than be used as little more than hard-worked servants by their parents.Charming animation helps make it a morality tale with a happy ending.