Interesteg
What makes it different from others?
Myron Clemons
A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.
Calum Hutton
It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...
Billy Ollie
Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable
TheLittleSongbird
My only complaint really of this otherwise excellent cartoon is that some of it was a little too rushed. That said, it is hugely enjoyable. Bizarre yes, with some quite effective freaky imagery, but also very off-the-wall in its humour. The animation is of very good standard, the colours are bold and Mickey looks better than I have seen him in quite some time.The music just enhances the atmosphere, often exciting, haunting, evocative and nightmarish it suits the tone of Runaway Brain wonderfully. The dialogue is memorable and the story while simple benefits from a great idea and is kept at bay right up until the end. I loved Mickey here, I always have although he can be bland sometimes when he is sidelined, but here we have a completely different side to him and while it mayn't be to everybody's tastes I liked that side to him.Overall, bizarre yet still excellent. 9/10 Bethany Cox
forman-7
I have come across a few criticisms over this short, but even those didn't ruin if when I finally saw it. First off, the animation was great. I love the way they did. They basically kept Minnie and Mickey's designs and freshened them up. The only thing I can complain about was the pace, since it did move a little too fast. But I think it is a great way to evolve Mickey into current trends and it'll still appeal to teenagers. Honestly, when the classic Mickeys were put out, do you think that the time was and trends were the same? I think not.Also, for the people that say it's too scary. I find that hard to believe. I showed this to a 7 year old, and they like it. Played three times more. I also showed it to my pops, who seemed to enjoy it and laughed at the references. So I think this was a success.The only reason I think some didn't enjoy it was because it came as a surprise as how dark this was. I guess some people didn't catch the commercials that were being shown on Disney channel that I saw when I was like...7 or 8. Anyway, this was a great way get put Mickey in the current time. And I see they're doing the same with "House of Mouse". They actually do have some good jokes in the show.
San Franciscan
When I actually had the chance to see this bizarre cartoon, I had one immediate reaction:WHOA.It's difficult to describe my reaction to this one apart from that one word. It's usually easy to comment on things I've seen, especially since I have a rep for stating my most precise, honest feelings on any subject you'd care to hand me and making myself perfectly clear. But this is one of the rare things I've ever seen which has put me at a complete loss for words.The cartoon is easily the weirdest Mickey Mouse cartoon ever made, and it made me feel strange for the longest time after seeing it with my reaction of, "What on earth was THAT?!!"There's one thing about it which I *can* state, however; my peers in the animation industry and I have loved making jokes about this short featuring the "real" Walt Disney Mickey Mouse being turned into the Michael Eisner Mickey Mouse!
Spleen
"Runaway Brain" was an attempt (or so the Disney studio announced before its release) to recapture the spirit of the earlier Mickey Mouse cartoons - not the series involving the dull suburbanite which fizzled out with "The Simple Things" in 1953, but the lively everymouse of the 1930s. But here's what they forgot: the banal Mickey Mouse cartoons c.1940-1953 were ALSO an attempt to recapture the spirit of the earlier Mickey Mouse cartoons. And THAT was an attempt made by the very same animators, writers etc. who had worked on the originals not long before. (The original directors, admittedly, had mostly either left the studio or gone on to work on features. The director of the later Mickeys was usually Charles Nichols, who HADN'T been responsible for the earlier ones, which makes him an easy target for blame - but some of his Mouseless cartoons, like "The Legend of Coyote Rock" and "Wonder Dog", show that he was a formidable talent, if not by the standards of his day, then certainly by the standards of ours.) If THESE people couldn't resurrect Mickey Mouse, what made Chris Bailey, with no prior credits at all (at least according to the IMDb), think that HE'D be able to?The truth is that the charm of Mickey's earlier cartoons, while undeniable, is highly elusive. In one of his last great triumphs, the Oscar-winning "Brave Little Tailor" (1938), Mickey battles a giant, in a climax that ISN'T played for laughs, even though it has some comic touches. Ditto "Runaway Brain". But the danger of the earlier cartoon is real; the danger here is completely fake. The Gothic mad science of "The Mad Doctor" (1933) or "The Worm Turns" (1937) was not violated by the inclusion of a giant cartoonish rodent; here, no particular atmospheric effect even gets a chance to establish itself. The sometimes over-deliberate pacing of the earlier cartoons somehow failed to hurt them in the least. Here, the overly zippy pacing is fatal. What's wrong with "Runaway Brain"? In a sense, EVERYTHING. It's a complete failure.In order to create GOOD new Mickey Mouse cartoons, Disney will have to set up a semi-autonomous short subjects unit and force it to churn out, say, twelve cartoons a year, of whatever kind strikes the animators' fancy, and hope against hope that in some years' time there will emerge a heroic cartoon director who feels strong enough to tackle the Mouse. Such a short cartoons unit would of course make a guaranteed, substantial loss, EVERY year, and I don't blame Disney for baulking at the idea. But it's the only way.
