"A Goofy Cartoon"
Release Date November 14, 1941
Alternate Titles
Running Time 7:57
Synopsis
Characters
Credits
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Television
Technical Specifications
Released by RKO Radio Pictures, Inc.
Gallery
Click on the thumbnail for the full-sized picture
Comments
Since this is a Goofy cartoon, the setting
could be no other place than the Swiss Oops. Inside the Sugar Bowl Lodge
(don't ask me if there was a New Year's or New Orleans influence), Goofy
is sound asleep with hot pads, several blankets, and a bearskin rug to keep
him warm. Needless to say. "Baby...it's cold outside."
The alarm clock rings and Goofy awakes slowly but surely, which is completely the opposite of what the narrator is pointing out. Afterwhich, the narrator points out basic information on the undergarments, the skis, and the shoes. Goofy puts on his skis after he scratches his back. Keep in mind he is not fully dressed yet, but still he puts them on with the shoes, where is foot is squeezing inside very uncomfortably. Once again, Goofy goes by his patented self by going back to sleep after putting that on! Well, "now" the narrator yells to wake him up and Goofy proceeds to put on his sweater on (the Goofy way, of course). Goofy is mislead by the narrator and thinks he is completely dressed...oops, forgot about the trousers. He tries to put them on with the skis and pants on (please don't try this at home) and gets his legs and skis crossed as he tries to balance himself. Do I need to explain more?
There is a great pan shot of the mountains while the narrator reads a poem. After he is finished, we see Goofy relaxing on the ski lift as he takes in the thin, fresh air. Goofy falls off at the very end and gets "spanked" by the seats of the lift. Goofy then proceeds (well, tries) to show how you are supposed to position yourself as you prepare to go down the hill, as well as how to get up. Of course, Goofy is his clumsy self, getting every part of his body entangled, even in an upright position. He is certain to win a game of Twister that way.
As he prepares to ski down a very easy hill, he goes backwards as expected, nails a rock head first and lands with his head in one of the shoes, and hangs upside-down between two cliffs. As the narrator would say, "Skiing is really quite simple once you get the hang of it." Goofy then tries to ascend using a "herring" technique, leaving his skis imprinted in the snow. However, when Goofy continues to climb vertically, then upside down, he obviously falls, leaving his own body imprints behind.
As Goofy tries to change direction at high speed, he jumps but loses his skis and both cris-cross for a while until they get reacquainted in a self-made collision (yes, X does mark the spot). On a downhill run on a steep slope, Goofy skis extremely fast...and eventually crash-lands at the bottom of the mountain.
The slalom was no better for Goofy because he crashes into a tree, takes it with him, slams in the middle of a cliff, and does his Woody Woodpecker imitation after he loses the tree. Needless to say, Universal Pictures was not that impressed, since they created Woody Woodpecker a year earlier.
The final and most exciting part of the cartoon, the ski jump, has Goofy ready to leap as high as he could and land perfectly safe, which he does neither. He jumps so high that radar gets affected, loses his skis from his feet but hangs on to them for dear life, nearly nails mountain, goes through a puffy cloud, and finally nails a mountain with a cloud covering the summit.
The plane has crashed. Goofy (yes, he's the plane) twists, turns, and tumbles all the way down until he crashes into his own hotel room and his bed...in sleeping position! Needless to say (as what the narrator says at the end), after a vigorous day in the open, the skier never has any trouble falling to sleep.
I'm surprised he did not crash into a hospital bed after all that!
--- Tom Wilkins
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