Reason and Emotion (1943)

Memorable, crazy movie

Expected more

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

As the title of my review of this reads and suggests, this is just the point that explains it. This is one of my favorite animated shorts of not only Disney and wartime (even though there's only a slight wartime reference in it all all), but of the golden era of animation and in general. A vivid exemplification and manifestation of what can happen when one jumps to conclusions and lets the worst thing get the best of him/her, in the form of two tiny people inside one's mind who control it. Sentiment must never dominate sensibility and they both must work in conjunction and equally in order to lessen the problems, predicaments, and troubles that may arise later. That's the message of why the rationalism half is so important. Concerning the aforementioned one dominating the other, this can be applied to the male Reason and Emotion in the mind of a listener in the audience at Hitler's speech. Basically, one should never let the worst circumstances get the best of him or her. Then, there's also resisting the temptation of overindulging, as in the case of the female counterparts of Reason and Emotion, who occupied the mind of a lady who gained weight feasting too much in a diner, thanks to the female Emotion's ineluctable appetite. These lessons are not only very useful in preparing for combat, but also in everyday life. Anyway, this is both a fun and interesting cartoon, and I enjoyed it very much, very well done and accomplished in explaining how those parts of mentality can either work with or against you, especially without wisdom. Love the concept.

This short's aim was to teach the American people about reason and emotion and how to let reason take control of your actions and let emotions go by the wayside. It uses excellent analogies of Emotion (as a caveman) and Reason (a sophisticated intellectual) driving a car that is your mind. When Emotion takes the driver's seat, things usually end badly with the consequences of poor decisions. The wartime propaganda eventually comes out about half way through and they show a comical sharp toothed, clawed representation of Hitler with ridiculous hair, brainwashing and twisting the emotions of Germans to get them to do his bidding. The whole subject is somewhat ironic in the fact that this is propaganda whose point is to disguise the underlying goal of using your reason and emotions to make you think a certain way, but at least the message is a good one. It is an entertaining short with comedy and some good lessons to learn like thinking for yourself, not relying on your emotions, respecting women, having self control, not being gluttonous and standing up against evil. I think our society today is in desperate need of learning some of these principles.

If there is anyone out there who read the comic book 'Beezer' as a kid then you will be familiar with 'The Knumbskulls'. A strip about a guy with little dudes living in him that control what he does. This short uses the same device to make an important, kind of subtle, point to us.Some guy, starting out as a baby, sometimes follows his emotions and at other times sense. Just like everyone else. He sees a woman he likes on the street and follows his emotions. It ends up a slap in the face, but her common sense reacted, not her emotions, which said 'yes'.The point of this is that Hitler used emotions to keep the Nazi's brainwashed. None of them used common sense to figure out that he was a lunatic. But perhaps today we should still use our common sense to not believe rubbish published in tabloids or biased news stations. The logic applies to many things, not just Hitler's Nazi regime.

This is one of Disney's best. But as with a handful of other shorts, this one is heavily edited by a Disney Co. skittish about negative images relating to World War II. It should be seen in it's entirety. The editing doesn't do a marvelous short justice. Well worth the trouble to find. Most highly recommended.