It's a Small World of Fun Vol. 4 1934 - 1958 Buena Vista Home Entertainment   Buy It Now

Disney’s It’s a Small World of Fun DVD releases have been complaining some of the best fan favorite animated short classic from the Disney Vaults into one collection. The theme of course has been Disney adventures based in other parts of the world, and the fourth volume of this ongoing series has more locations near and far to let your imagination wander.

First, we’re off to the United Kingdom in a classic tale of dragons and knights. Okay, maybe it’s not quite your classic tale, and it’s not even close to the yarns that storytellers have regaled us with for years, but The Reluctant Dragon, a short you may have seen previously as a part of the Disney Treasures line, Behind the Scenes at Walt Disney Studio to be more precise, is more a tale of “poetic justice.” Here we find a not-so-fierce dragon who is too busy having tea and reciting poetry instead of terrifying the villagers, though they are convinced that the beast is behind many an atrocity. When the brave Sir Giles meets the Dragon, they find they are exactly the same and a young boy helps them to put on quite a spectacle, just to give the villagers the fight they want.

From fire we go to ice; the chilling reaches of the South Pole. In Polar Troopers, also seen on the first volume of The Chronological Donald, the obnoxious duck and pal goofy are trapping animals, though the reason they just don’t know. Donald has a hankering for something other than their one food source, beans, and the penguins seem like just the thing while Goofy deals with a rather rowdy walrus.

Next up is a trip to ancient Greece with Disney’s The Goddess of Spring, one of the final shorts under Disney’s Silly Symphonies name. The short has also been seen on the DVD release of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, and that’s honestly one of the best films to tie in with it. The Goddess of the Spring was released just a few years prior to Snow White and you can see many of the same types of character movements and such, even the design of the settings, though Snow White is vastly superior. In the short, we find Persephone taken to the underworld by Hades (who has a similar design to Maleficent.) Of course, all ends well in Disney features, and the same is true here as well.

When your trip into days long past is completed, you’ll be taking a trip to Mexico with Goofy. For Whom the Bulls Toil, originally release on DVD as a part of the Disney Treasures Complete Goofy collection. Goofy manages to get a bull to see red, though only because of the handkerchief in his pocket, and his impressive, though accidental, performance has the locals thinking he’s a natural as the bullfighter, something that’s not even close to the truth.

The disc concludes as we’re taken back to the United States for The Little House. The Disney Treasures release, Disney Rarities: Celebrated Shorts, 1920s - 1960s originally contained this classic short feature based on the children’s book written by Virginia Lee Burton. This is probably one of the best features on the entire disc and is quite a bit different from what you normally might expect to see from the mind of Disney. The story is touching, even sad in some portions, but once again we find a happy ending and quite a memorable story and animated short.

One of the surprises here is that normally, these collections tend to contain at least one segment that hasn’t yet been released on DVD, but not in this case. Everything has been seen at one time or another on some other collection, but as many of these were included on the Disney Treasures line, any fan knows that all of these are limited editions and finding some of them may not be quite as easy as simply making a trip to the local retailer. So, if you’ve missed any of these in the past, now is the time to at least get a part of what they offered.

Your passport to fun and adventure is waiting for you, and Disney has it. It’s a Small World of Fun as always offers up some exiting and most importantly, hilarious Disney shorts as only they could offer them. The days of the cartoon appearing before the main attraction sadly are long behind us, but you can relive the golden age of cinema and cartoons right here, and this quick jaunt to locations near and far is bound to please just about everyone.

-mike-