Not that much of Disney's short output during the 1950s was all that exciting, anyway after the studio began to produce films in earnest around 1940, the shorts quickly turned into an afterthought. I am here speaking privately, you understand, but as long as I've been able to articulate an opinion on the matter, it's been clear that these are not at all the best Goofy had to offer: he was best as a foil to the competent Mickey and the irascible Donald, of course, but in his solo days, the slapstick "How To" shorts from the '40s, and especially those involving Goofy's misadventures with professional sports, are clearly the cream of the crop. Goof Troop, to my mind, always suffered from a single, crippling flaw: it was seemingly derived from the run of Goofy shorts in the 1950s when the character, divorced of his longstanding context alongside Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, stood in as the All-American Suburban Husband, in stories parodying the culture of Eisenhower Era life, with an unseen wife and a small Goofy clone only ever called Junior. Overall, it’s a worthwhile film.To those who have no knowledge of Goof Troop, allow me a brief primer: it was one of several cartoons produced by Walt Disney Television Animation in the early 1990s, when the returns on DuckTales and Chip 'n' Dale Rescue Rangers made afternoon television seem like the most golden and self-renewing of all untapped revenue streams * giving old-school characters a chance to breathe in a new environment (even when, as in TaleSpin, that environment made no damn sense - I spent much of my childhood, all of my adolescence, and an unhealthy portion of early adulthood wondering why wild animals from the British Raj would end up as businessmen, club owners, and daredevil flyers in the 1930s in the North Atlantic). There are still no fully-intact nuclear families visible here (Goofy and Black Pete are obviously single dads, and we see Roxanne’s dad but not her mom if she has one) but the change in Disney policy that allows these characters to be fathers, coupled with changes in the average real-life family, make for a story that a lot of people can relate to. In the old days, the Mickey Mouse group of Disney characters were never shown as mothers and fathers, only as uncles and aunts. The rock music is annoying (and correctly shown as having the power to influence behavior), but is not a major factor. Also a humorous yet serious look at parent-child relationships, discipline techniques, and the consequences of lying. There’s some comic-style violence, as we’d expect in a Goofy film. The “and you thought YOUR parents were weird” storyline, generally a sure-fire gag, is played here to maximum effect. Just when Max finally manages to ask Roxanne on a date, Goofy ruins things by whisking him away on an extended father-son vacation. He already has some of Goofy’s mannerisms and his trademark “hyuk” laugh, which he tries to suppress. Max is a shy, backward type in high school, partly because he fears growing up to be like his father (tagline: “It’s hard to be cool when your dad is Goofy”). (and a Sasquatch), all the film’s characters appear to be humanized dogs. Except for the cat Black Pete and his son P.J. Based on a Disney TV show, this film follows Goofy and his son Max as they bridge the generation gap and learn to understand and appreciate each other.
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