Release date First television showing : September 30, 2000

Synopsis

Mickey, Donald and Goofy try business together one more time as the owners of a telephone answering service.

Characters

Mickey Mouse (Voice : Wayne Allwine)

Donald Duck (Voice : Tony Anselmo)

Goofy (Voice : Bill Farmer)

Credits

Editor : Thomas Hart

Writer : John Ludin

Directors

Tony Craig

Roberts Gannaway

Television

Mickey Mouse Works : Season 3 : Episode 4

House of Mouse : "Dining Goofy"

Comments

From Lee Suggs : Yet another of the Mickey, Donald, and Goofy working shorts. This short begins with an amusing gag depiciting the answering service's phone "going dead". Next there is a very funny sequence as the Terrific Trio goes to the phone company to get the phone fixed. This involves a right on satire of the automated phone services we all love so much. (push 1 if you speak Finnish, 2 if you speak Dutch, and 3 if you speak Cantonese... etc.) The short then loses its focus when Goofy goes into a uninspired and too long routine using the word "line" in different ways. (This didn't work with the word "key" in "Locksmiths", but I guess they just had to try it again.) The short then just runs out of gas with a questionable gag in which Goofy's butt becomes a phone. (Don't ask, I did gag.) I think the "MouseWorks" crew should drop these trio shorts, or base them on the Disney Comic Books. (Like "Mickey Foils the Phantom Blot", now that was a GREAT short!)

From Rich Bellacera : I was intrigued at first by the funny "Phone Company" gags until Goofy did his "line" jokes. From there one I was bored. And when Goofy's butt was ringing, obviously Mickey and Donald wouldn't touch it, and neither would I. Apparently the writers and animators were scraping the barrel for an ending... too bad they didn't find one.

From Juan F. Lara : The trio was trapped in a strange reality in this ep. Their phone could come alive...to die, the phone company had a headquarters shaped like a gigantic phone and with no employees, and the guys could get sucked inside through a phone line. And as I watched all of this I went "huh?". Mickey and the other characters just don't fit in such a surreal world. When there's an explanation behind the strangeness it works, like in "Topsy Turvy". But this short was more like "Locksmiths", where bizarre things inexplicably happen. The short also relied too heavily on gags about push-button instructions, those gags being one of the most overused in cartoons, and yet another list of bad puns. These problems made the short baffling and tedious.

From Roy "AniDisTin" Lam : You guys are too harsh! This short was one of the funniest shorts I have ever seen! And definitely one of the best shorts starring the terrific trio!

Alright, I do admit the ending was a bit of a letdown,but the rest was a heck of a wild, action-packed ride that I enjoyed practically every second of! The button-pushing gags were well-written,especially the "Congratulations! You want to pay your bill" line, and made for a great satire of the "couldn't-care-less" attitude of answering services! And Goofy's "line" puns were classic too,or perhaps it's just because I'm a pun-lover.

Anyway, as I said, I found the ending a letdown, 'cause I just couldn't get it. It felt like the creators had just run out of ideas.

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