After watching both the 1959 and 2006 versions of The Shaggy
Dog recently for the Disney Film Project podcast, I wasn’t at all looking
forward to watching Goofy deal with a canine friend in Man’s Best Friend. It is, however, a continuation of the George
Geef version of the Goof, the third distinct evolution of my favorite
character. After all, he began as Dippy
Dawg, evolved into the “How To” genius that’s his most famous form, and during
the early 1950s has become the suburban dad.
With that comes the need to deal with owning a dog.
The second bit is a different type of comedy, though, as it
takes the normal dog vs. man dynamic and upends it a bit, as the dog forces
Goofy into conflict with his neighbors. After
Bowser trashes every thing within walking distance, Goofy is forced to repay
his neighbors for the damages in a nice funny scene. Unfortunately, that’s about the only good gag
in the middle part of the short. The
rest is merely Goofy being dragged along by the larger Bowser, which is a
typical gag.
The final section, though, is a nice payoff, as we see
Bowser’s ability, or lack thereof, to be a guard dog. The dog ends up sleeping through the thieves
breaking into the house, their eventual capture by the police, and everything
in between. But when Goofy returns from
his fancy outing, Bowser is immediately awake and attacks his master, with all
the ferocity he did not display for the thieves.
Man’s Best Friend ends up playing out like a typical George
Geef short, which means that the gags are good, not great, and the storyline is
rather predictable. That doesn’t
necessarily mean bad, it just means that it’s not the wild action we were used
to from the “How To” shorts. It’s something
that has been a slow change for the company from the late 1930s to the 1950s,
but ends up making a lot of shorts that people will count as sugary or
simple. In my opinion, Man’s Best Friend
falls in that groove, being a nice, funny short, but not original or very
compelling. Still, worth the watch if
you like Goofy like I do.
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