Melody Time is the fifth “package film” from Disney, anthology type films that mainly consisted of short films packaged together. These were low-risk, low-cost, easy-to-make movies that Disney released in order to gain some money to be able to make long theatrical movies again. These movies are a bit of a mixed bag, but Melody Time is most similar to Make Mine Music. Both of these movies just contained a large number of unrelated shorts, set to popular music (at the time). Since Melody Time is just a collection of seven unrelated shorts, it would probably be best to review each segment individually.

The first is “Once Upon a Wintertime,” which is one of the weakest shorts for me personally. It’s about a couple who goes ice skating, but then the ice starts to crack and the man has to rescue the girl from a dangerous situation. It sounds good in theory, but it’s honestly just not all that interesting to me.

The second is “Bumble Boogie,” which is probably my favorite of the movie. It’s a simple short about a bumblebee who is trying to avoid a frenzy of musical obstacles. It’s one of the shortest ones in the movie, which is a shame since I liked it so much. It feels the most like Fantasia to me, where the animation and the music really feel like they go hand in hand. If you don’t watch all of Melody Time, you should at least watch this.

The third is “The Legend of Johnny Appleseed,” which is exactly what it sounds like. There’s the folklore tale of Johnny Appleseed, who planted apple trees and spread Christianity during wartime. This is an animated telling of that story set to music, and the result is pretty good. The segment does go on a little long (running in at the second longest of the movie at 17 minutes), but is mostly enjoyable and has some really fun animation.

The fourth is “Little Toot,” which is about a small ship that’s trying to be like his dad, but ends up getting himself into trouble. This is like the Dumbo/Bambi kind of short to me, where it’s cute and very kid-friendly, but not as substantial as some adults want from Disney movies. It has a simple lesson and is mostly endearing, but it wasn’t my favorite.

The fifth is “Trees,” which is simply just some animation showing trees going through the changing of seasons. This is literally the definition of style over substance, with no real story going on. The short is literally just some nice animation of trees set to music. It’s good for what it is, but I found it to be really forgettable. It has well-done animation, but it’s not that interesting.

The sixth is “Blame It on the Samba,” which is the most similar to The Three Caballeros, featuring two of its protagonists, Donald and Jose. This segment is another “style over substance” one, but I really liked it. It’s probably my second favorite, behind “Bumble Boogie.” It’s just simply Donald and Jose dancing to samba music, but the animation is so fun. It’s a mixture of animation and a live-action organist, Ethel Smith, playing an organ that Donald and Jose are dancing on. This one is really fun and sometimes trippy, so I think it’s worth it for any Three Caballeros fans out there.

The final short is “Pecos Bill,” which has since gone on to become “the controversial one” of the movie. It’s about a cowboy named Pecos Bill and his exploits, including falling in love with a girl that he meets and rescuing a horse from some birds. For later home video releases of Melody Time, this segment was heavily edited, due to having some scenes of Bill smoking cigarettes and firing off guns. Luckily, the movie has been restored to its original version for its Disney+ release, so if you want to watch it how it was meant to be seen you can watch it on there. I don’t even find the short to be all that troublesome. It’s so cartoonish that it’s hard to feel that it’s sending some sort of bad message to kids. I think it’s a pretty decent short, but not one of my favorites.

Melody Time is a bit of a mixed bag for me. I thought it was a much better collection than Make Mine Music, but it doesn’t achieve nearly the same heights of “animation set to music” as something like Fantasia does. It has some really great shorts, but also some really forgettable ones. I also just don’t think that these “compilation movies” as a whole for Disney are nearly as strong as most of their feature-length films are. I thought that Melody Time was one of the better ones, but it’s still nothing amazing.

3.5/5