How to Be a Gentleman

    A Goofy Cartoon

    Release Date : September 9, 2000

    Synopsis

    In order to join a ritzy country club, Goofy must learn to dress and behave like a proper gentleman.

    Characters

    Goofy

    Credits

    Director
    Mike Moon
    Rick Schneider
    Story
    Jymn Magon
    Story Editor
    Henry Gilroy

    Television

    Mickey Mouse Works: Season 3 - Episode 5
    Mickey Mouse Works: Season 3 - Episode 1
    House of Mouse: Season 2 - Episode 11

    Technical Specification

    Comments

    From Patrick Malone : Although this was the only new short in this week's episode, it was a fitting send-off to the third season. This one was much more surrealistic than the classic shorts. It was mostly done against plain backgrounds, letting the gags take center stage. There were some pretty surprising moments, such as Goofy's struggle with "following the bouncing ball" and a very funny moment when he attempts to correctly address Queen Elizabeth.

    A word has to be said about the narrarator. It looks like we've come full circle from the original "how-to" shorts. In the first few (such as How to Ride a Horse) the original narrarator, John MacLeish was not initially told that he was going to narrarting a cartoon short, but just a standard educational short. The contrast between the serious narraration and Goofy's antics made the shorts much sillier.

    Here, though, Goofy has been allowed more and more to interact with the narrartor, culminating in the ending to this short, where the narrartor finally gets to say what he's probably really believed from the beginning, and Goofy finally gets his revenge. Gotta love it.

    From Lee Suggs : This is a fun short despite the fact that this isn't my favorite feature of the MouseWorks series. Goofy tries to get into a Country Club and is thrown out because he's a bit TOO country. (His club is thrown out too.) So the narrator sets out to refine the Goof so he can join the club. The results start out slow, but really get going with the "poise" segment. This part has some great gags, and I actually found myself laughing out loud. The short has an excellent ending, and in general I'd rate it as a good showing for the series.
    From Juan F. Lara : This short was set mostly in an abstract stage that allowed for a lot of cartoon bending of reality. Some of the cartoony jokes worked really well. I could understand how Goofy got fed up with that tongue twister making no sense, and I liked that he tried to fix those subtitles so that he could read them. I also thought the stuff they threw at Goofy during the poise section was imaginative and well paced. But the short had a few misses as well. The elocution scene came off as a ripoff of a Bugs Bunny gag from a certain Chuck Jones cartoon ("Robin Hare", I think), and was poorly timed. Goofy's toon ability to eat all that food and everything else seemed out of place for Goofy. Did he ever do a gag like that in the classic shorts? Still, I thought the hits outweighed the misses this time, and that this short had some better looking artwork for this series.

    What exactly is the narrator supposed to be? It looked like Goofy was beating up a camera at the end. That example of reality bending was another gag that I thought worked very well.

    Submit Your Comments

    (Note: you must be logged in to submit comments)