Runaway Brain (1995)

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

Yo, there's no way for me to review this film without saying, take your *insert ethnicity + "ass" here* to see this film,like now. You have to see it in order to know what you're really messing with.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

This is the first time I comment on a film I haven't seen.Not that I didn't want to. I bought the Disney Treasures/Mickey in Color 2 DVD set, official edition (not some bootleg) here in Germany. I watched Leonard Maltin announce it in his intro, including a second of snippet.. I watched all 5 hours of the DVDs, bonuses and all.. tried all the menus for hidden Easter eggs.. no luck.As I've met possible censorship on another Treasures DVD just some days ago (Der Fuehrer's Face was missing from Chronological Donald 2 - possibly because displaying swastikas is illegal in today's Germany), I suspect a somewhat similar reason here.. not law, but viewer clearance. The whole Disney cartoons are cleared for age 0 and up. Now if a DVD contains just one item with a higher limit (6/12/16/18), it must display that clearance for the whole bundle.. I suspect that marketing considerations led the German distributor to self-censor and remove Runaway Brain, even though announced by Maltin. I'm really frustrated.Update, July 11, 2011: Now I've watched the film, on YouTube. A nice combination of modern-day dynamics in cartoons with many 1930s themes: the ancient looks of Mickey and Minnie, the King-Kong, mad scientist, brain transplantation themes and so on... very likable! I was surprised that it was produced in France, but hey, that's globalisation...So I'm softening my above point on censorship, too. It certainly exists, but given the Net, there just as certainly are ways around it. By the way: some weeks ago, I also located The Fuehrer's Face on archive.org.

Not many people know this, but Runaway Brain is actually being released by Disney on DVD! It's included on the Disney Treasures Mickey in living colors volume 2 DVD box. I love the quality of the animation, which is far much better than 3 Musketeers or Mickey's House of Mouse. Although this movie isn't suitable for very young children, it will be funny for the older ones and especially adults who will adore the spoofs to other movies. The hardcore Disney fan will adore this short too, mostly because it shows Mickey in a whole different way we know him. My advice is: get the Treasures box and enjoy one of the best Mickey shorts of the past years.

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!

"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.