Villainous happenings at the House of Mouse (Mickey's House Of Villains (DVD))

Name: chrisandmark

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Product:	Mickey's House Of Villains (DVD)
Date:	19/09/04 (265 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: A charming, fun film, Excellent soundtrack, A wide mixture of animations of different styles and eras

Disadvantages: Old cartoons, would have preferred to have seen new animation, Disappointing bonus material on the DVD

Most of you will know what the House of Mouse is. For those who don't it's a kind of social club for Disney's cute stars, a theatre type thing where they can sit down and relax with a ginger beer after delighting the nations children. You'll see them all there laughing along to Mickey Mouse's gags, while Donald Duck flaps about in a temper. House of Mouse is just cuteness personified.

That is until Disney rounds up it's biggest, baddest villains and they take over House of Mouse. You're talking the real bag guys here wanting to do battle with our cute, furry (and feathered) friends - Jafar is the ring leader and has teamed up with Captain Hook, Cruella de Ville, Ursula and whatever other meanies he can recruit into his motley crew. But Mickey, Goofy and the gang will not allow House of Mouse to be rebranded House of Villains, oh no!

The DVD is not at all what I expected because the Villain storyline is basically short clips holding together a montage of classic Disney shorts. When I saw House of Villains I bought it for the kids thinking it was going to be a Disney film like Lion King or Beauty and the Beast but it's really a series of cartoons with a fairly insubstantial storyline linking them.

Once I'd got over my initial surprise over the layout of this DVD I settled back to watch with my 5 and 8 year old girls. Most of the cartoons are linked in nicely to the main storyline with all of them having a spooky theme, showing the more classic Disney characters of the Mickey Mouse and Pluto era in various situations involving ghosts or wicked witches. My particular favourite was one I remember from when I was small where Mickey and Minnie Mouse come across a gingerbread cottage and run into trouble when the nice lady who's been feeding them cakes turns into a typical green faced witch. Classic Disney.

While Disney have chosen the cartoons carefully to tie in with the Villain storyline some of the transitions from villainous happenings in House of Mouse to the spooky cartoons seem forced, like the bods who put the film together desperately wanted to use a particular cartoon but couldn't quite tie it in so did the best they could. Not that a child would spot this of course, I had my reviewers head on while watching the DVD! However, this could have easily been solved by Disney creating new animations for the film rather than recycling stuff that has literally been around for 30+ years. That wouldn't have been hard for Disney and in my opinion would have made this DVD feel more 'special' to the adult viewer.

Cartoons these days (particularly of the Cartoon Network variety) are garish and loud so the cuteness of House of Villains was definitely appreciated by everyone here. It was refreshing to watch good, wholesome animation rather than having to sit through Edd, Ed & Eddie picking their noses and flinging it about! Another thing I liked was the mish mash of cartoons from different eras, the storyline with the villians is the only original work for it and so is ultra modern while the cartoons are picked from decades ago.

The soundtrack is perfect for this type of film with lots of spooky wailing and drumrolls indicating when something 'scary' is about to happen. The music is brilliantly used to emphasise situations and cleverly added in the background on some of the older clips where there isn't much speech. But then Disney have always been clever with their soundtrack choices, remember Fantasia? Another brilliant film, made all the better by smart use of music. There are a few sing songs in House of Villains with the only one worth a mention being 'It's Our House Now' brilliantly sung by the villains and highly original.

The kids loved House of Villains. Absolutely loved it. I think it was possibly the most quiet 70 minutes our house has ever seen, they were enraptured from the very beginning of the film and literally didn't move until the credits were rolling up at the end. They only moved then to pass me the remote so they could see what extras Disney had for them on the DVD!

The extras were nothing particularly special, mainly previews of (what were then) forthcoming Disney films including 101 Dalmations 3 and Lilo & Stitch. Nothing they hadn't seen before here. Reel of Misfortune was a nice game for Charlotte who, at 8, has the co-ordination to play it. You basically have to spin the wheel and answer questions on a particular villain to gain links to a bridge you're building - get more than 3 questions wrong and your bridge collapses and you fall down a ravine to your death... Nice... The game totally lost my 5 year old who had no idea which film Jafar is from originally and couldn't remember how Captain Hook lost his hand! Fright Delight is just silly, Disney have used the spooky soundtracks from House of Mouse and the Villains and played them one after another with the same cartoon in the background. Pointless as both soundtracks sound the same so it was like watching the same (boring) thing twice!

House of Villians has a U certificate which means it's suitable for all ages, I'd say the storyline would be wasted on a child younger than 3 although they'd still enjoy the animations. If you fancy buying House of Villains it's currently £12.99 in Woolworths or you can buy it online from £6.99 at various DVD selling sites.

Go on, treat the kids!

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