After a successful night at the House Mouse, Mickey and the gang are surprised to learn that they are snowed in, with little sign of things letting up. Donald Duck however seems to be a bit of a Scrooge and is lacking the Christmas spirit. This is sort of odd to me since everything we've seen before contradicts this, especially his older short with Chip an' Dale.
Mickey of course has a plan and decides that everyone should sit around and watch more shorts! This leads me to wonder what they were watching before we joined them, wouldn't they have already watched these Christmas shorts? But who cares! What matters is getting Donald's lost spirit back and serves as the filler between shorts.
The first short up is a Mickey Mouse Work and centers around a Snowman contest. However the short largely focuses on Donald having to deal with a crack in the ice that just won't leave him alone and eventually chases him into the cave of an abominable snowman. It is at this point the snowman takes over the chase and wins the contest.
We return to the House of Mouse to find Donald still lacks the spirit and are treated to a quirky Ludwig Von Drake "The Science of Santa" demonstration and a video clip of Mickey asking various character what they want for Christmas.
Our next short is actually one of my favorites, Pluto's Christmas Tree. It's one of the classic shorts from Walt's years and deals with Pluto as he goes up against Chip an' Dale who live in the tree Mickey has decided to use for Christmas. It's a fun filled short and is actually more entertaining and at times more pleasant to look at than our first short here.
More filler between shorts! We find out what more characters are thankful for and get to hear from characters like Mushu, Eeyore to the Mad Hatter. Following up this up we get a brief clip of Mickey and Pluto breaking the laws of physics to decorate the outside of their house for Christmas.
The Nutcracker segment is our next story as Minnie and Mickey takes the roles of Maria and the Nutcracker respectively. Ludwig Von Drake joins us as Godpapa Drosselmeyer, Donald Duck is the Mouse King (though only because he believes he will win) and Goofy as.....the magical snow fairy. Right then, the short itself seems to have it's characters be rather aware they are actually playing these roles as shown in a small bit with Donald and again with Goofy. We also get a bit of fourth wall breaking when Ludwig and the Narrator (voiced by John Cleese) interact with each other. The short itself is quite fun, even if a few bits of it are repetitive dancing.
What's this? More filler! Yay! We find Donald is still a bit of a humbug, much to Grumpy's enjoyment and to the dismay of everyone else. Rather interesting since even Jafar a -villain- is full of the Christmas spirit. Mickey is saddened that his friend is missing out, and after a chat with Jiminy Cricket has his hope renewed. After one last attempt, things are finally set right. However, all is not done yet as we are treated to 'Mickey's Christmas Carol' though the opening credits are trimmed out.
I'm going to largely skip over reviewing the short again given how I have already summed up my thoughts on it. After the short we are treated to a rather sugar coated Christmas song sung by all of the characters. I think the only real thing of interest from the ending is just getting to see all the characters singing together and it sort of makes up for the overly sugar coated lyrics. For a House of Mouse vehicle, this is rather fun and worth watching for the shorts alone.
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