Mickey's Service Station (1935) User Reviews

A milestone cartoon.

[planktonrules · 8/10 · 10 February 2019]

There are a couple milestones which were achieved with this Disney cartoon. First, it was the first time Donald, Goofy and Mickey were teamed up for a film. And, thoughout the rest of the 1930s, the trio would become about as familiar as FDR and the Depression. Second, it's the final black & white Disney cartoon.

The trio all work for a service station. An armed and dangerous Pete arrives and tells them they have 10 minutes to make his car stop squeaking or, he implies, he'll kill them!! So, they do as you'd expect...and make a mess of things. After all, Donald and Goofy are involved. So what's Pete really gonna do?

This is a good though not great Disney short...which still makes it far superior to its competition. While it has lots of milestones, its quality is no better than any of the team's later work. Very watchable and enjoyable...but not their best stuff.

This film lampoons its production company . . .

[pixrox1 · 7/10 · 8 December 2021]

. . . comparing the Dizzy Boys to the crazy uncle who is always taking apart things that WERE working perfectly, and then never being able to put the product they destroyed back into any semblance of proper working order. We residents of this Our Modern 21st Century have seen the Dizzy corporate descendants do this time and again with such formerly finely oiled machines as the M-Puppets, Pixar, Star Wars, ABC, Nightline, ESPN--plus let's not forget Marvel, and the ongoing ETERNALS debacle. This, of course, is the only reasonable context that allows viewers to appreciate the extreme irony inherent in MICKEY'S SERVICE STATION.

At least they got the squeak out.

[OllieSuave-007 · 10/10 · 20 February 2016]

This is an earlier Disney cartoon featuring Mickey, Donald and Goofy. Here, they are working at a service station and were given the daunting task of getting a squeaking noise out of grumpy Pete's car in 10 minutes. What results are hilarious scenes after the other, from Goofy hammering his hand by mistake to Donald tripping over buckets of oil. Every attempt they made to fix the car ended being one laughable mishap after the other. They ended up getting the squeak out, but got the best out of the car and ultimately made Pete getting more than he bargained more.

It's pure entertainment, slapstick humor and laughs from start to finish. Mickey is his determined self and Goofy is his accident-prone character. Donald got his classic, fiery-tempered and voice-crackling personality. Great stuff!

Grade A

Helped by a classic ending!

[TheLittleSongbird · 9/10 · 3 June 2012]

There have been many classic Mickey Mouse cartoons, and Mickey's Service Station is one of them. My only real criticism is that compared to Goofy and Donald, who delight with their clumsiness and temperament, Mickey(seeing as it's his name in the title of the cartoon) is a little bland, he is still likable but more of the lovable loser type than the heroic type. His two gags, him getting stuck in an empty tire rim hoop and getting tangled in an inner tube, are amusing but not hilarious, not in the way Goofy's stumbling around trying to get the car safely on the ground is. The main gag, finding the cause of the squeak is a clever one also. But of the gags, all of which are well-spaced out, humorous and imaginative, the best part was the ending, Pete's, as rapacious as ever, reaction and the sequence where he gets chased by his mistreated car is classic. The animation is crisp and clean, with a fast-paced story and a music score full of snap and energy. The voice work from Walt Disney, Pinto Colvig, Clarence Nash and Billy Bletcher is impeccable. Overall, a great cartoon helped by lots of things but especially the ending. 9/10 Bethany Cox

A change for the better

[JonathanDP81 · 10 April 2000]

The best Disney shorts were when they put a Disney character or characters in an everyday situation and let the chaos begin. This one was an early example of them moving away from the song and dance cartoons which they had been doing for so long and into that sort of thing. The antics that Mickey, Donald, and Goofy go through to fix Pete's car are genuinely funny, with a wonderfully loud end. A very good watch.

Service With A Smile

[Ron Oliver · 10/10 · 28 May 2003]

A Walt Disney MICKEY MOUSE Cartoon.

Bullying gangster Pegleg Pete leaves his roadster at MICKEY'S SERVICE STATION for Mickey, Goofy & Donald to find the source of a squeak...or else!

Here is one of Mickey's final black & white cartoons and it is excellent. Watching the three hapless friends bring their chaotic cacophony to a climaxing crescendo - including a satisfying comeuppance for Pete - is tremendously funny.

Walt Disney (1901-1966) was always intrigued by pictures & drawings. As a lad in Marceline, Missouri, he sketched farm animals on scraps of paper; later, as an ambulance driver in France during the First World War, he drew comic figures on the sides of his vehicle. Back in Kansas City, along with artist Ub Iwerks, Walt developed a primitive animation studio that provided animated commercials and tiny cartoons for the local movie theaters. Always the innovator, his ALICE IN CARTOONLAND series broke ground in placing a live figure in a cartoon universe. Business reversals sent Disney & Iwerks to Hollywood in 1923, where Walt's older brother Roy became his lifelong business manager & counselor. When a mildly successful series with Oswald The Lucky Rabbit was snatched away by the distributor, the character of Mickey Mouse sprung into Walt's imagination, ensuring Disney's immortality. The happy arrival of sound technology made Mickey's screen debut, STEAMBOAT WILLIE (1928), a tremendous audience success with its use of synchronized music. The SILLY SYMPHONIES soon appeared, and Walt's growing crew of marvelously talented animators were quickly conquering new territory with full color, illusions of depth and radical advancements in personality development, an arena in which Walt's genius was unbeatable. Mickey's feisty, naughty behavior had captured millions of fans, but he was soon to be joined by other animated companions: temperamental Donald Duck, intellectually-challenged Goofy and energetic Pluto. All this was in preparation for Walt's grandest dream - feature length animated films. Against a blizzard of doomsayers, Walt persevered and over the next decades delighted children of all ages with the adventures of Snow White, Pinocchio, Dumbo, Bambi & Peter Pan. Walt never forgot that his fortunes were all started by a mouse, or that childlike simplicity of message and lots of hard work always pay off.

Early teaming of Mickey, Donald and Goofy as a trio

[llltdesq · 8/10 · 11 December 2014]

This is a black and white Mickey Mouse short produced by the Disney studio. There will be spoilers ahead:

This short finds Mickey, Donald and Goofy as mechanics. The basic personalities of the three are in place, though Donald's physical character design isn't quite what most people are familiar with. Pegleg Pete (with what sounds like a Russian accent) drives up, tells them he has a squeak in his car and threatens them if they don't find the squeak in ten minutes. In a nice touch, there's a small shoe on Pete's peg leg! There's a nice gag involving Pete and a horn.

Most of the short is our trio essentially destroying Pete's car in colorful and inventive ways while looking for the squeak. The animation here is excellent, as always and the gags, largely visual in nature, are hilarious. Mickey has problems with a tire rim, the pistons make Goofy rather unhappy and pretty much everything he touches manages to make Donald angry.

The source of the squeak is discovered and leads to wholesale destruction. It's a nice gag, so I won't spoil it here. Our heroes barely manage to get the car cosmetically looking more or less presentable, but their "tender" care becomes clear when Pete starts his car. The ending is perfect.

This short is available on the Disney Treasures Mickey Mouse In Black and White, Volume One DVD set and it and the set are well worth finding. Recommended.