The second volume in the Walt Disney Animation Collection is very loosely strung together by theme of predatory animals. Though the title is The Three Little Pigs, we are treated to lions, foxes, fire as well as wolves. It's a sort of lame premise for a DVD collection, but all in all, they're agreeable enough cartoons to make it a not-horrible addition to your collection if you're interested in old animation (though not, as mentioned previously, in any equal to the Walt Disney Treasures Collection). All of them, that is, except for Chicken Little, which feels like it must have been suppressed for decades and is only now being allowed to surface for whatever reason. It is certainly the exception to the rule, but it's easily the most memorable cartoon in the set.
The rest, for the most part, are fairly typical of animation of that period. Lots of talking, anthropomorphic animals creating hijinx, lots of double takes (if you created a drinking game out of the number of double takes that appear in any given short, you'd be hammered before the end), and lots and lots of heady moralizing, which is perhaps the most striking thing about this set. The moral of The Three Little Pigs is pretty clear (if you don't work hard, you will most likely be devoured by a larger predator of some kind), and fairly timeless; but to see that moral repeated over and over in the tale of Three Little Wolves and The Big Bad Wolf goes past the point of retelling to reveal something about Old Man Walt himself, as well as what society thought was appropriate for children at the time - mainly being that any slight deviance from socially accepted behavior is likely to result in swift and sudden death.
Perhaps even more revealing are the shorts Elmer Elephant and Lambert the Sheepish Lion, both stories about social outcasts whose very deviance makes them useful in times of emergency. Maybe it's vindictive of me, but I think that it's totally reasonable to let people (or talking sheep) burn after they've been cruel to you, but Walt Disney seems to disagree.
But any and all questions of morality and social norms vanish the second Chicken Little comes on. The story is pretty standard and conformed to the one we all know, but Disney adds an anticommunist angle on the whole thing that makes it absolutely insane. See, in this version, the falling sky is a ploy by the malevolent fox to sow the seeds of discontent in the unsuspecting coop thus fracturing its society and making the hens more vulnerable for the taking. If it sounds like I'm over-complicating this story, I assure you that I'm not. All the while he's doing it, he's reading from a text that sounds shockingly like something that might be found on the bedside table of either Sacco or Vanzetti. But none of that quite compares to the ending. I won't spoil it for you, but it's one of the most unsettling ghoulish things that I've ever seen in a cartoon. And I've seen that creepy scene with the devil from The Adventures of Mark Twain.
All in all, it's not an exemplary set. It's kind of hard to sell old cartoons as basic entertainment when they've already been sold as historical nostalgia, and the complete lack of extras doesn't help. As mentioned in my review of the first volume, it's hard to imagine children really getting into collections of material this old, and it's hard to imagine adults embracing a set this bare bones when all of these cartoons have already been released in exceptional sets. Still, there's enough invention and good spirit in most of these cartoons to merit a look, especially for the uninitiated.
"Walt Disney Animation Collection: Volume 2: The Three Little Pigs" is on sale May 12, 2009 and is rated G. Animation. Directed by David Hand. Written by Various. Starring Val Kilmer, Dorothy Compton, Florence Gill, Frank Graham, Mary Moder.
