Rating: 
Summary: GREAT DISNEY DVD
Review: I grew up in the 80's watching all the Disney shorts on the Disney Channel and I loved the shorts very much, they were such a part of my childhood. I watched the Disney Channel not that long ago and all of the shorts are gone, they have nothing but teen comedies and dramas, I couldnt believe it! I mean the shorts are what made Disney, to just take them off the channel completely was ridiculous. When I saw this DVD Collection I had to buy it immediatley just so that I could someday show my children the shorts that I grew up with and that I still treasure even today. So I would highly recommend buying this DVD!
Rating: 
Summary: Middling Mickey
Review: I guess from a collector's point of view, it's great to have these shorts all in one place; in fact, the Disney company should be lauded for making them available at all. But this second collection of Mickey's color shorts falls far short (no pun intended) of others in the Disney Treasures Collection (particularly Mickey's B&Ws, Donald's shorts & the amazing set of wartime cartoons just released) for the simple reason that they're just not very good. "Mickey and the Beanstalk" and a few cartoons aside, the collection here is not particularly innovative or entertaining. And listening to Mickey and pals singing lousy lyrics to Verdi opera in "The Prince and the Pauper" is terribly painful in light of the extraordinary songs that Ashman & Menken were to write for Disney not too long after. This collection illustrates one thing above all else: how Disney's animation factory ran out of steam (big time) in the late 40s - early 80s. And that Mickey evolved from a spirited imp into a suburban bore.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent and overdue collection of Mickey's Best
Review: I love Mickey Mouse cartoons. They might not be as funny as Donald Duck's, Goofy's or the entire Looney Tunes set, but they do posess a certain little magic, not to mention quality, to them that make them more like little artistic masterpieces rather than comic gems. This said, I'm glad we finally get to see "Runaway Brain" released on DVD, along with fellow Oscar-nominated shorts "The Pointer," "Mickey and the Seal" and "Mickey's Christmas Carol." The extras are more than plentiful and the inclusion of "The Sorcerer's Apprentice", although already available in both Fantasia and Fantasia 2000, is, as always, welcome, especially in a collection that is supposed to showcase what the mouse is all about...I've been a fan forever and I really couldn't have asked for a better DVD set than this!
Rating: 
Summary: The content warnings are really lame...
Review: I was not raised on Walt Disney cartoons... In fact, Mickey and Pluto always seemed a bit square to me, and that impression was amply confirmed on this 2-disc set of some of Mickey's later cartoon appearances (from 1940-53, and then some later cartoons from the 1980s, when the character saw a dramatic revival...) The drawings are nice, but the gags are stale, repetitive and endlessly drawn out, and the plots are incredibly lame in comparison to the vivacious, imaginative Looney Tunes material I grew up on (and still love). Mickey is such a flimsy character, too, and that voice of his is, well, kind of annoying. Sorry... not trying to pick a fight with anyone, it's just how I was raised.
Anyway, I picked this volume up because I had read about how it contained several long-deleted cartoons that supposedly had offensive material (ethnic stereotypes, etc.) and as a student of pop culture, I wanted to check it out and see what all the fuss was about... The material in question is called into sharp focus by a series of insincere introductory mea culpas by host Leonard Maltin, who invariably says the same thing: "Oh, we certainly don't condone this sort of thing now...!! But look at how far we've come as a society that we can now look down upon it..." Which is all very well and fine (except that we have to see Maltin onscreen every ten minutes or so...) except for one thing... None of the material is really all that racy or offensive...! A stereotyped Italian accent? An Amos'n'Andy genie in the bottle? Mickey dresses up as a cigar store Indian for two seconds to elude a pursuer? Someone gets drunk in one cartoon? Someone uses a gun in another? The things that the Disney folks bent over backwards to apologize for are pretty paltry and absurd, this is taking the confluence of political correctness and "family values" morality to ridiculous lengths, if you ask me. And if Disney is going to be so all-fired, touchie-feelie, super-sensitive about anything that could conceivably offend anyone in their audience, then why isn't there an apology for the broad Southern accent used in the cartoon called "R'Coon Dawg"? Apparently hicks 'n' hillbillies are still fair game, even now in this enlightened era of the 21th Century. Well, my land, honey chile!! Wut will them thar big-city slickers think uv next? Gol-durn.
Rating:
Summary: Great conclusion to Mickey's color career
Review: Mickey Mouse in Living Color Vol. 2 is a great dvd package. Included are some very entertaining shorts and featurettes, many of which I had forgotten until I just viewed them again. In my opinion, I prefer the shorts on Vol.1, but it is nice to finally have the whole collection to enjoy forever.
A lot of people have complained here that Leonard Maltin's introductions to some of the shorts are annoying and unnecessary. I agree to an extent, that they can get repetitive. But Maltin was a major player in getting this great material released to the public in all of its uncensored glory. It does seem rediculous that we need to put shorts like "Mr. Mouse Takes a Trip" into perspective when Mickey dresses like an indian, because it was all done in fun and not meant to offend. Personally, I think that anyone who gets offended by a cartoon has bigger issues to deal with in their lives. We live in such a politically correct world though, that if he did not do this we may not be able to see the original versions. So you should thank Maltin for working so hard to get these to us.
Okay, as far as the content goes, it is great and each has its own charm. Highlights for me were "Mr. Mouse Takes A Trip", "The Little Whirlwind", "Orphan's Benefit"(Donald steals the show again), "Mickey and the Seal", and "Mickey's Christmas Carol(my new holiday favorite. Of course that only is the tip of the iceberg. Others are included that were already available, like "Sorcerer's Apprentice" and "Mickey and the Beanstalk" that are nice to have in a complete set. Extras are plenty on this volume as well.Included are the following:
"Mickey's Cartoon Comeback"
"The Voice Behind the Mouse"---The evolution of Mickey's voice
Mickey Mouse Club Titles in Color---5 original openings to the show.(This will be a Treasure in the next wave by the way)
"Mickey Meets the Maestro"
Mouse Mania-- A very strange stop motion short that you gotta seeMickey Cartoon Physics from "Plausible Impossible"
Mickey on the Camera Stand from "Tricks of Our Trade"
"The Making of Mickey's Christmas Carol"--My favorite extra
Publicity and Memorabilia Gallery
Story and Background Art Gallery
In my area this and the Donald treasure have been the biggest sellers. This has a lot of entertaining content between the shorts, featurettes and the extras, which include great behind the scenes looks at how a lot of this material was brought to the screen. The picture never has looked better and probably never will. Children and adults alike will enjoy what this set has to offer, so get your copy now before they are gone. So far I have viewed this, Donald and Tomorrowland and I would rank this #3 behind Donald(1) and Tomorrowland(2) and I am about to go through On The Front Lines. But I say I rank it third and that is not a bad thing, fans of Mickey and animation in general should appreciate this set. It is definately worthy of bearing the Walt Disney Treasures name.
Rating:
Summary: Awesome, but...
Review: Mickey Mouse in Living Color Volume 2 is great. It features a multitude of Mickey/Pluto shorts and some really cool extras. Each cartoon has its good points and bad points (some more than others) but overall a very, very awesome set. The best part is having Mickey and the Beanstalk, Mickey's Christmas Carol, and The Prince and the Pauper all together in one set :)
Unfortunately, when you use the Play All feature, it doesn't just play the cartoons. Many of the cartoons feature a brief introduction from DVD host Leonard Maltin. Now, you would think these introductions would tell you a bit about the history of the short, how the story was conceived, who directed it, whatever. But, no, all these introductions are for is to warn viewer about possible "offensive" material found in the shorts. It really saddens me that we live in a world where people cannot see the past as past and accept they way things were at the time. Instead, we have these really annoying clips of Maltin telling us how much more "enlightened" we are nowadays. He says the same repetitive things in each intro.
The public domain releases of old cartoon from the '30s and '40s that you can get at Wal-Mart for a dollar have the same type of supposedly offensive material (actually, probably more of it than anything Disney would ever have). We don't, however, have Leonard Maltin there warning us of the dangers of supposedly un-PC material. Whatever. Aside from that, this set is awesome! :)
Rating:
Summary: Maltin has to go!
Review: Once again, Disney has put together an impressive collection of cartoons; in this case, a wonderful assortment of Mickey Mouse cartoons. (Plus a lot of behind the scenes stuff, and a few easter eggs.) But Leonard Maltin's commentary hits an all time low on this DVD set. To begin with, he explains to us how these shorts aren't really as good as Mickey's earlier work,(leaving us to wonder why we've just invested our money in them!), but, some of them are kind of cute, so we may actually enjoy them. Then, he jumps back on the old political correctness bandwagon and feels obligated to explain to us (very often!) how these cartoons are not PC by modern standards, but that, rather than 'putting them on the shelf' (lest someone be ... gasp! ... offended) we should watch them and appreciate how times have changed, and how much more sensitive and understanding we are today. (Yeah ... like contemporary movies NEVER contain stereogypes ...) The commentary before "Mr. Mouse Takes a Trip" (in which he explains that Disney didn't MEAN to be bigoted and prejudiced when he had Mickey disguise himself as an Indian and say "How!") is bad enough -- but when he came on before "The Nifty Nineties" to tell us all that the scene where Minnie and Mickey attend a vaudville show is not PC by modern standards (because it contains comic references to drinking -- and we all know that drunkeness is not funny), but we should just try and accept it in the spirit in which it was intended --I was ready to throw something at the screen.
Maltin occassionally has some interesting things to say, but I'm far more offended by his belief that viewers are too stupid to understand that humor changes with the times and that life was different 60+ years ago than I could ever be by the fact that a cartoon might contain a bit of ethnic/racial stereotyping. Buy the set, but when Maltin comes on the screen, take a bathroom break.
Rating:
Summary: Is it just me, or did the writing get worse after WW2?
Review: There are 2 things that bother me about this collection (the first involves the headline).
1. The collection is great right up to 1942 (right up to the hilarious "The Symphony Hour"), but after that (starting with 1947), the cartoons get (almost) boring. They focus around Pluto, and leave Mickey to play straight man. Did one of the writers die in world war 2? Malton doesnt focus on this in the intro (or any other parts I can find).
2. Have we "come so far" that we need to apologize for every ethnicity used in animation. Aparently Malton (or Eisner in disguise) feels the need to. On this collection, Malton is more specific on the incorectness. Maybe they should have just put a parental sticker on the can instead. Makes you wonder why they're putting off on releasing "Song of the South" (I can just see it. A 30 minute intro by Leonard Malton explaining that the era was POST Cival war).
Disc 2 is the one that shines on this collection. A full length "Mickey's Christmas Carol", "The Prince and the Pauper", and the short "The Runaway Brain" (all in a wonderful 1.85:1 aspect ratio), plus some pretty outstanding bonus features.
This one is definately a keeper. It's just not as good as Vol. 1.
Incidentally, there is an easter egg. One of the musical notes can be highlighted, then press enter (it's in the bonus menu). Some good historic stuff.
Also, my hat's off to Leonard Malton. The PC statements may be anoying, but at least we get the animations UNEDITED. Leonard, if you're reading this, let's talk "Song of the South".
Rating:
Summary: GOOD, BUT NOT AS GOOD AS THE FIRST SET
Review: This second set in the Mickey in living Color presents several more classic Mickey cartoons along with a host of extra features. While the toons are not as strong as those found in volume one they are certainly nothing to sneeze at. Once again film historian and animation fan Leonard Maltin provides an introduction. "Tugboat Mickey" Tugboat captain Mickey is cleaning his boat when he receives an SOS! Only Mickey, Donald and Goofy can save the day "Mr. Mouse takes a trip" No dogs are allowed on Pete's train, so Mickey tries to smuggle Pluto aboard with a variety of disguises "Orphan's Benefit" An ensemble performance emceed by Mickey includes piano playing, an adagio dance, an operatic number, and numerous attempts by Donald Duck to recite "Little Boy Blue. "Pluto's Christmas Tree" The fir tree that Mickey and Pluto chop down to bring home for Christmas is the home of Chip 'n' Dale. After the tree has been trimmed, the chipmunks delightfully explore their newly decorated surroundings, much to the chagrin of Pluto, the only one who knows that the tree contains the pair. Chip 'n' Dale soon drive Pluto crazy as they explore their new Christmassy surroundings. When Mickey finds out, he chuckles naively and thinks that they're cute. In addititon to these shorts you get several longer Mickey features including, "Mickey's Christmas Carol, Prince and the Pauper, The Sorcerer's Apprentice, and Mickey and the Beanstalk. There are also a number of great extra featurettes that make this a must have set.
Rating:
Summary: Runaway Brain
Review: This should be an excellent collection. For the reviewer who stated that "Runaway Brain" has never been released for the public, it's almost true. It was released on Super 8 color sound movie film just a few years ago by an English company called "Derann films". (You can find them on the internet) Believe it or not, they are still producing new Super 8 film product for people who collect super 8. (surprisingly, it's still going strong.) They have aquired nearly all the animation rights for release of Disney product, with exceptional quality. The other 30 minute long specials starring Mickey from the 80's and 90's are released by them on Super 8 as well.
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