I was going to lead off this review with the pithy comment, “In the next episode of No Objectivity Theater, it’s the Disney+ documentary Mickey: The Story of a Mouse”. I was going to say that, but now I can’t (and yet, I managed to anyway… huh….) because this very self-serving and self-aggrandizing documentary actually spends some time frowning at Disney’s past… in the last twenty minutes of the movie anyway. Before that, the producers of this doc had to be rushed to the hospital for breaking their arms patting themselves on the back.

Pithy comments all the way down, baby!

Anyhow, this documentary covers the creation and history of Mickey Mouse, corporate mascot. We get a lot of loving, adoring chatter about what Mickey means to us all, some decent old footage of classic Mickey shorts, how Mickey evolved (and stagnated) over the years, and how he’s represented in the greater pop culture.

The doc is pretty good even if it does spend too much time staring at its own reflection. But, hey, I can’t deny that Mickey Mouse means a lot to many people, especially kids. It made me think about my relationship with Mickey… which is honestly quite limited. I can’t recall seeing any Mickey Mouse cartoons as a kid since (as the doc points out) they let Mickey stagnate as an entertainer (but not a corporate mascot) for a long time. But I must have had toys and been exposed to the iconography since I can recall liking the little rodent as a kid.

And, yes, the doc gets into some negatives about Mickey Mouse and Disney itself. More than I would expect, though it doesn’t linger for too long on each topic. For example, they point out the blackface in the earliest shorts, the way he chased Minnie around, and that time he went disco. You know, the dark times. It should be the least of the compliments for a documentary to be warts and all, but this is a Disney joint so any kind of self awareness is surprising.

I wound up enjoying this doc more than I thought. It does wear out its welcome with the adulation early on but the doc gets more interesting the longer it runs. It’s better than I expected, if nothing else.

Score: 78