Mickey's Kangaroo (1935)

By 1935, Walt Disney Productions was operating at a remarkable pace, churning out Mickey Mouse shorts at a rate that would seem extraordinary by today's standards. Mickey's Steam Roller and Camping Out had both arrived the previous year under the same director, and the studio's short-form output was functioning almost like a production line, each entry a polished but unremarkable exercise in keeping Mickey in the public eye between bigger releases. Mickey's Kangaroo arrives in that same spirit: a nine-minute comic short in which Mickey receives a young kangaroo called Hoppy as a gift from a friend in Australia, and promptly discovers that Pluto is not the least bit pleased about the new houseguest. It is a light, breezy premise, the kind the studio could execute in its sleep by this point.

The short was directed by David Hand, a name that deserves a little more recognition than it tends to get in casual conversations about the Disney canon. Hand was one of the studio's most trusted directors during this period, and he would go on to take the directing credit on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs just two years later, a rather significant step up from nine-minute shorts. Here, though, the task was more modest: keep things moving, land the gags, and give Mickey and Pluto enough personality to carry a short programme. The voice cast is the familiar Disney roster of the era, with Walt Disney himself providing Mickey's voice alongside Lee Millar, Pinto Colvig (the voice of Pluto, among others), and Don Brodie. It is a tight, experienced team working on familiar ground, and it shows in the smoothness of the production even if ambition is not exactly the order of the day.

Context matters when watching something like this. Animation in 1935 was still a craft very much in the process of finding itself, and the Disney shorts of the mid-1930s occupy an interesting transitional position, moving away from the rubbery, sometimes frenetic energy of the earliest Mickey cartoons toward the more considered, character-driven work that would define the studio's features. Mickey's Kangaroo sits somewhere in that middle ground, charming and competently made, but very much a product of its moment rather than a title that has lingered in the cultural memory the way some of its contemporaries have. For anyone curious about how animation as a form developed during this decade, it sits alongside other work of the period as a useful, if unassuming, document of the craft in progress.

Mickey’s Kangaroo is a tiny little relic, just 8 minutes of vintage Disney charm from 1935, and honestly, it shows its age. It’s Mickey Mouse doing his usual cheerful, can-do thing, this time trying to manage a hyperactive kangaroo that causes chaos wherever it hops. The animation is surprisingly lively for its time, and you can see the early steps toward the smoother, more expressive style Disney would perfect just a few years later. For a 90-year-old cartoon, the movement and timing hold up better than you’d expect. But as a viewing experience, it’s pretty thin. The plot is basically “kangaroo breaks things, Pluto gets annoyed,” repeated three times with slight variations. There’s not much of a punchline, and the gags feel stretched even at such a short runtime. It’s cute in a “oh, look how they used to make cartoons” kind of way, but not really funny or memorable on its own. Still, it’s worth a quick watch for animation history fans more for curiosity than enjoyment.

For me, that is really the only honest way to frame it. I have a genuine fondness for this era of animation history, and I found myself watching Barnyard Olympics in a similar spirit not long ago, more as a curious observer than as someone expecting to be thoroughly entertained. There is something genuinely worthwhile in seeing where the craft came from, even when the individual film does not have much to offer beyond that historical interest. If you are working your way through the Disney shorts chronologically, or you have a particular interest in the early development of character animation, this one earns its nine minutes. Just do not go in expecting it to be funny. It is a curio, not a classic.

Rating: ★★½  | Year: 1935  | Watched: 2025-08-28

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Where to watch

Watch in the UK
Stream: Disney Plus
Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi

Watch in the US
Stream: Disney Plus
Physical: Amazon US

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Related on Movies With Macca

More from David Hand: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) · Mickey's Steam Roller (1934) · Camping Out (1934)
More with Walt Disney: The Skeleton Dance (1929) · The Barn Dance (1929) · Barnyard Olympics (1932) · Mickey's Steam Roller (1934)
More from the 1930s: Earth (1930) · Monkey Business (1931) · Sabotage (1936) · People on Sunday (1930)
More animation: Fantastic Planet (1973) · Alice in Wonderland (1951) · Mononoke the Movie: The Phantom in the Rain (2024) · Mononoke the Movie: Chapter II - The Ashes of Rage (2025)
More comedy: The Eagle (1925) · The General (1926) · Americana (2023) · The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! (1988)