Get a Horse!

***Get a Horse!*** is a 2013 black-and-white/color traditional/CGI hybrid Walt Disney Animation Studios short film. The short features archival voice recordings of Walt Disney as Mickey Mouse. It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film of 2013, but lost to *Mr. Hublot*.

## Synopsis

The film begins as a typical 1920s black and white Mickey Mouse cartoon, with Mickey Mouse walking from his house and spotting Horace Horsecollar pulling a hay wagon with all their friends playing music. He hops on the wagon and helps Minnie Mouse and Clarabelle Cow onto the wagon. Just then, Peg-Leg Pete shows up in his jalopy, his horn bellowing "Make way for the future!" Pete spots Minnie and gives her a flirty gaze, but Mickey puts Clarabelle in the gaze in Minnie's place and Clarabelle plays the bagpipes with her tail and udder, causing Pete's viewing line to droop in disgust and horror. Mickey then switches Minnie back and they laugh. Angry at being pranked, Pete snatches Minnie and rams his car into the wagon, sending Mickey flying towards the screen. Seeing Mickey bounce off the fabric, Pete hurls him and Horace harder into the screen until they burst through the screen and land in the colored, CGI-animated modern world.

As Pete taunts Mickey from inside the screen and closes the hole in the screen, Mickey tries to get back into his world, pulling back the curtains to reveal a wider screen. Horace then walks onto the stage wearing a Captain America t-shirt and carrying a cellphone, Milk Duds and popcorn. Mickey decides to use Horace as a mock biplane to fly around the theater and fire at Pete with Milk Duds. When they crash land onto the stage, Mickey finds the smartphone Horace brought (and apparently stole) onto the stage, so he calls Pete on his candlestick phone and Horace sprays foam from a fire extinguisher into the smartphone and out from Pete's phone.

Pete's car then lands in a frozen lake and the screen fills with water, giving Mickey the idea to poke a hole in the screen with his tail and let the water leak out, causing Pete, Minnie and the other cartoon animals to flood out onto the stage. Mickey and Minnie's reunion is short-lived, however, as Pete gives chase to the characters in and out of the screen until he snatches Minnie again, punches Mickey onto a support beam and nails the screen shut. Horace and the others decide to swing from the beam and try to break though the screen like a wrecking ball, but the plan only manages to flip the screen upside-down, causing Pete to fall from the ground.

Mickey flips it again and Pete lands on the ground, his car crashing down on him. Getting an idea, Minnie encourages Mickey to flip the screen again, this time having Pete land on a cactus, which sets off a chain of events. First, Pete gets electrocuted on some telephone cables, then he has his face get hit by all the steps on a ladder. Then he lands his rear end on a pitchfork, then he falls onto a seesaw, where he gets hit on the head by numerous tools. A sledgehammer then rams the pitchfork deeper into his rear. Finally, the sledgehammer falls on the opposite side of the seesaw, where Pete is launched and lands face first in his jalopy.

Horace, Mickey and Minnie begin to laugh hysterically at Pete's pain. Suddenly, Horace's hand gets stuck behind the screen due to him pounding the screen. Mickey tries to pull him out, but only succeeds by spinning the screen horizontally. To Mickey's realization, it re-winded the scene. Seeing this as an opportunity, Mickey and Horace begin spinning the screen around until Pete is completely knocked out.

Minnie then drives Pete's car with Pete in tow and completely tears the screen down, revealing the black-and-white world in color for the very first time. Mickey and his friends dance for a moment and re-enter their world. The horn that was on Pete's car tells an unconscious Pete to "Get a horse!" before Mickey and his friends bring down a new screen, then Mickey waves goodbye to the audience. As the iris out closes, Pete, comes to and tries to get back in through the screen, only to get his head stuck. Seconds later, the flap on Pete's pants open up to reveal the words "The End" on his butt and Pete bellows "Hey!!" as the screen cuts to the credits.

After the credits, the castle is in black-and-white and Clarabelle jumps over it, making the arch with milk.

## Why It Rocks

1. A extremely creative concept of the cartoon characters pops off the movie screen, in a favor of the popularity of *The Purple Rose of Cairo*.
2. It stays clearly faithful to the Disney cartoons of the late-1920s.
3. Very unique voice acting, with Walt Disney voicing Mickey Mouse.
4. Immersive animation. While the hand-drawn animation looks smoother, compared to the Disney cartoons of the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s, the CG-animation clearly fits the style of the early Disney cartoons.
5. This film looks like a Disney theme park attraction, but is more entertaining to watch.
6. "Oh my gosh! RED!"
7. Very good voice clip editing.
8. The character designs that fits the standards of the Disney cartoons of the late-1920s.
	* Minnie's 1928-style design is still extremely cute and charming.
	* Humphry Bear's 1928-style design looks stylized.
9. Julius the Cat finally made his comeback.
10. Every funny moment. Surprisingly the 1920s-style Disney cartoons are blended with the modern-day *Looney Tunes*-esque humor.
11. Minnie Mouse adorably returns to her humorous, old-fashioned, tomboyish personality. It also marked Minnie's return to playing her pranks.
12. The unique relationship between Mickey Mouse and Horace Horsecollar.
13. At the end, you'll see Oswald Rabbit's cutesy cameo.
14. Very good reference to Marvel's most popular character, Captain America.
15. The extremely hilarious twisted ending, with Pete comes off the screen, trapping him in the real world.
16. Good soundtrack.
17. After the end of the credits, you'll see Clarabelle Cow doing the Walt Disney Pictures logo.

## The Only Bad Quality

1. The scenes with Pete lands on the cactus, the electric high wires and the pitchfork can be too painful for a G rating.

## Trivia

* This is the first Walt Disney Animation Studios short film to be produced in a 2.35:1 widescreen aspect ratio, unlike the short films which are usually produced in 1.85:1.
	+ Thus, it is also the first Mickey Mouse production to be filmed in that ratio, not counting the *Donald Duck* and *Humphrey Bear* shorts from the mid-1950s.
* Due to the fact that Walt Disney didn't say "red" in most of the early Mickey Mouse cartoons, it took about two weeks for the sound editors to edit Walt Disney's voice tracks to assemble the word "red" and make it sound like a surprised statement.
	+ This is the only Walt Disney Animation Studios short film to be produced in two aspect ratios: 2.35:1 and 1.33:1. The film begins in 2.35:1 and color when the Walt Disney Animation Studios logo is shown, and then switches to a smaller 1.33:1 aspect ratio for the black and white sequence. When Mickey and Horace pops out of the screen, the film switches back to 2.35:1 and color. Prior to that, Disney previously used such dual aspect ratio switch from 1:85:1 and 2:35:1 as a storytelling device in the movies *Brother Bear* and *Enchanted*.
* This is the first appearance of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit in a Disney animated production (outside the *Epic Mickey* franchise) in more than 84 years.
* This cartoon is the first Mickey Mouse theatrical cartoon since *Runaway Brain* (1995), as well as the first shown theatrically before a Disney animated feature (in this case, *Frozen*) since *The Prince and the Pauper* (1990) which accompanied *The Rescuers Down Under*.
* Horace Horsecollar wears a Captain America shirt in the film.
* The candy that is used as ammo in the short is Hershey's Milk Duds.
* *Get a Horse!* won the Annie Award For Best Animated Short.
* Russi Taylor is the only current voice actor to reprise her role here using snippets of her recording and Marcellite Garner's.
* Similar to the first five Mickey shorts (*Plane Crazy*, *The Gallopin' Gaucho*, *Steamboat Willie*, *The Barn Dance*, and *The Opry House* [in that short, Mickey puts on gloves when he plays a piano]), Mickey does not wear gloves.
	+ It was also the last time that Mickey Mouse didn't wear gloves.