Shorts review: Mickey Mouse – O Futebol Clássico

Spoilers Below

The FIFA World Cup starts on June 12. In celebration, Mickey Mouse visits the World Cup final in O Futebol Clássico. Since the games take place in Brazil this year, the episode is entirely in Portuguese, the country’s official language.

When the episode begins, Mickey grabs the perfect seat. Unfortunately, a very large man with a rainbow-colored afro sits directly in front of him. Mickey lets the man know that he can’t see and the man politely removes the afro wig. This frees the largest afro poof ever. So Mickey decides to move to the other side of the stadium.

On his way over there, he bumps some people, causing the Wave to break out across the stadium. As the Wave comes back around to our mouse, he gets booted out of his seat and onto the opposing team’s bench. Eventually, he ends up in the middle of game. Once both teams figure out that he isn’t supposed to be there, he gets kicked out of the stadium.

Mickey sadly wanders around the parking lot, disappointed that he is missing the game. Suddenly, he comes upon some balloons. The balloons give him a brilliant idea. He ties three balloons to a chair and floats above the stadium with a perfect view. However, a flock of birds takes notice of the sky intruder. They pop his balloons and he falls back to earth. Mickey lands on top of the large man’s large afro, where he can happily watch the game unimpeded.

Despite the fact that everything in the episode is in Portuguese, the visuals easily explain what is going on. I understood every second without actually understanding the language. That said, the episode did have a few flaws. Since they couldn’t rely on language, the writers/animators needed to make each beat of the episode have more impact. Another option would have been to add subtitles so they could have more speaking parts to move the story along. As it is, we have a mostly mute Mickey running around and an announcer (who happens to be José Carioca from Saludos Amigos and Three Caballeros) just yelling into the microphone. It was a good episode but it could have been better.