Food for Feudin'

Back to the cartoon shorts today, with Treasure Island and Planet in the rear view mirror.  With Disney primarily focused on Pluto and Donald in the late 1940s and early 1950s, it’s no surprise that the short today is a Pluto one, featuring Chip and Dale along for the ride.  It’s also no surprise that Food for Feudin’ features Pluto taking on the chipmunks as both try to hide and store their food.  His seems to be the plot of almost every Chip and Dale short.

I don’t know enough about chipmunks to say, but Disney certainly seems to believe that all chipmunks are interested in is hoarding food.  It seems to be Chip and Dale’s singular obsession, to be sure.  In this scenario, though, they run into Pluto, who is also trying to hoard his bones.  They encounter each other when Pluto happens to choose the same tree as the chipmunks.  Hilarity, as it often does, ensues.

The nice detour this short takes after the initial back and forth is to involve some props in the game.  Yes, rather than just have Chip and Dale pull Pluto’s tail or poke him in the nose or silly things like that, the animation team came up with something much sillier.  The concept is that the chipmunks inhabit a pair of gardening gloves, and so the gloves start acting as independent hands moving on their own around the doghouse and teasing Pluto.

It makes for some creepy and silly animation all at once.  These disembodied hands play baseball, communicate to Pluto through gestures, and generally get the dog all riled up to play.  It’s not entirely clear why they are doing so, when all the chipmunks want to do is get the nuts stored in the doghouse.  It makes sense, though, when they finally con Pluto into dragging the dog house over to their tree.

I like this short for its willingness to break the usual mold.  It would have been exceptionally easy to try and just have the chipmunks pulling their normal pranks, but adding the element of the disembodied hands almost makes for new characters.  You can watch this short with no knowledge of Chip and Dale and really enjoy it, because they serve as generic antagonists that are actually cute and enjoyable to watch.  I think watching a bunch of Chip and Dale shorts gets old quickly, but remember that this is not how they normally were seen.  Go check out Food for Feudin’ though if you want to enjoy a great short with the two chipmunks.