The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad

The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949)

The last of Disney’s six package films is The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, which, like Fun and Fancy Free, features only two shorts with a prominent narrative; in this case, “The Wind in the Willows” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” - based on the classic stories of the same names - which star the titular Mr. Toad and Ichabod, respectively. Like “Mickey and the Beanstalk”, both these films originated as full-length features, but had to be cut down to shorts due to production troubles and time constraints that Disney rain into due to their involvement in the Second World War. Though generally an improvement on Fun and Fancy Free, The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad still suffers from some of the familiar issues of weak pacing and a lack of originality and creativity, in lieu of simply being “cute”.

The film doesn’t have much of a framing device, it simply shows a library featuring the books of “The Wind in the Willows” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and then opens them up to reveal the story; not exactly creative, but effective and refreshing, considering how Fun and Fancy Free’s attempts at establishing a more concrete framing device for its shorts only served to hurt the movie as a whole. First is “The Wind in the Willows”, narrated by actor Basil Rathbone – famous for playing Sherlock Holmes – whose dignified, upper-class British accent matches the setting and tone of the short perfectly. Narration is used much better here than in some of Disney’s other shorts, particularly “Bongo” and “Peter and the Wolf”, where the narrator constantly describes what is going on and never lets the characters or visuals speak for themselves, or “Mickey and the Beanstalk”, where the short is constantly interrupted for stupid jokes and snide comments from the narrators. The narration here sets the scene well, but it knows when to stop and let the characters talk, or when to let the action speak for itself – it knows that good animation should rarely need narration to explain it and follows the age old technique of “show, don’t tell”. The animation is nothing new or innovative, but it’s certainly very enjoyable to watch – the animals don’t exactly have creative designs, but look good enough and are very lively in their movements, which fits the comical and over-the-top style of the short; the physical humour here is really quite funny. The backgrounds are even better and, as always, are lovingly and carefully constructed; Disney has a real talent for creating natural, pastoral atmospheres, their woodland backgrounds from this short, as well as films such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Bambi are always fantastic and some of their finest pieces of art.

Mr. Toad’s Really Fucking Balls to the Wall Ride

The characters are larger than life and very engaging, Toad in particular holds the short together by being lovably wild, energetic, restless and most of all, fun; though careless and often selfish, you can’t help but enjoy Toad’s lust for life and happy-go-lucky demeanour, which means you genuinely care about his plight and want things to turn out alright for him. Also of note is Cyril, Toad’s wise-talking horse and partner in crime, who speaks in a Lancashire accent; he is lovable in the same ways, though a bit of a troublemaker, you can’t help but get invested in his reckless behaviour and he’s always a lot of fun. The other animals aren’t quite as interesting, but they work effectively as straight men to Toad – together they form a solid ensemble whose interactions and charming and funny. The best parts of the short are the courtroom scene, which has some amusing satire towards the legal system and the climax, which features a rather inventive and exciting chase scene. “The Wind in the Willows” doesn’t break any new ground and is ultimately a pretty standard Disney cartoon, but it’s probably one of the better ones.

This is such a funny image to me look how small Toad is how does he even reach the pedals even the gun is bigger than him he looks so sad hahah

Unfortunately, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” is not quite as engaging and falls back into some old bad habits. It’s narrated by the legendary Bing Crosby, whose voice is as charming as always, but the narration isn’t used as well here as in “The Wind in the Willows”; while that short knew to keep the narration limited and let the short present its own story, here, Crosby’s narration is pretty constant. This means that we don’t get to hear much from the characters, while Crosby does explain their personalities and we can get a glimpse of them through their actions, it becomes a little difficult to be too interested in Ichabod’s story when we pretty much never hear him speak. For that matter, Ichabod is actually kind of a jerk! The central plot of the short – not that it ever really gets resolved – is Ichabod’s desire to marry the beautiful Katrina, but as Crosby tells us in detail, Ichabod is pretty much only interested in Katrina for her money; not only that, but he takes advantage of many other women’s feelings for him by getting them to cook for him, while clearly having no interest in them as people. It’s kind of hard to root for Ichabod, to want to see him get the girl instead of the burly Brom Bones (Who, despite being a bit of a trickster and jealous of Ichabod, is said by the narrator himself to generally be a pretty nice guy) or to want him survive his encounter with the Headless Horseman when he’s a bit of a selfish jerk. By all means, Toad is selfish, but not intentionally – it is clear that he does care about his friends and doesn’t mean to put them through any trouble, but his childish naiveté and reckless thirst for adventure causes him to do stupid things without thinking about it; ultimately he does learn his lesson and makes amends, even though it’s clear that he’s still prone to a little reckless mischief. Ichabod on the other hand, is calm and in control, he is very clearly aware of his actions and acts deliberately – he intentionally leads women on in order to receive gifts from them, he pursues Katrina with the deliberate intent of getting his hands on her money and land; he quite clearly doesn’t care much about anyone but himself and is willing to take advantage of others to get what he wants. I know it’s a goofy, comical cartoon, but it’s still a little unsettling to have Ichabod as our hero, meaning he isn’t a strong enough protagonist to hold the short together – unlike Toad – and as a result, the short kind of falls apart.

Now, I aint’saying he’s a gold digger...

The animation and story are nothing special, there’s not much going on here; the pacing is pretty crappy, the Headless Horseman only appears in about 4 minutes of the 30 minute short and it’s a little disappointing. The story doesn’t even naturally lead up to the confrontation either, I could understand if most of the short acted as build-up to the eventual climactic chase, but most of it is just scenes of Ichabod coming to town, being a bit of a jerk and trying to woo Katrina before, in the last 10 or so minutes, we are introduced to the idea of the Headless Horseman in a story. I suppose this is supposed to be setting up Ichabod’s character, but as I said before, his character is never really established that firmly and the few parts of his personality that we do get are pretty negative and unlikeable. I understand the short could hardly be 30 minutes of the Headless Horseman chasing Ichabod, but you’d think this would at least be the central focus of the short, as opposed to being something that is suddenly brought up near the end and then only featured in the last few minutes. This really makes the short feel messy, with a trailing, slow and rather dull story that runs through most of it before suddenly being abandoned for a chase scene; the Headless Horseman looks cool and all, but he practically comes out of nowhere and has nothing to do with the story we’ve seen so far. The ending is very sudden and awkward, Ichabod... dies, maybe? Then Katrina marries Brom and we hear that maybe Ichabod is alive, but maybe not and then the movie is over. I understand Disney was following the ending to the original short story on which this is based, but I dunno, they’ve changed things before to fit the format of their stories better, so why not this? They at least could have approached it differently, as it is, this hardly works as the ending of a relatively light-hearted and comical short – the tone and pacing of this short is all over the place and it results in a disappointing, if harmless, segment.

‘Hey Ichabod, if they made a movie of us what actor do you think would play me?’

‘Um, I dunno, Christopher Walken?’

‘Hahahaha good one man, you’re a funny guy’

That’s pretty much all there is to say about The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, considering it follows the same kind of format of Fun and Fancy Free and has some of the same problems, there isn’t really much I can say here that I haven’t said about that, or any of Disney’s other package films. The film is not especially bad, it is just the last in a long line of package films, an idea that, by this point, had become very tired and worn out. While nothing spectacular, “The Wind in the Willows” is still a fun and memorable short with some great characters, jokes and animation, but the confused and poorly paced “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” is not a good enough follow up, which drags the film as a whole down. The film is certainly still an improvement on Fun and Fancy Free, but I think it’s safe to say that it’s a good thing that The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad was the last of its kind.