Mickey Mouse (2016 film)

 Mickey Mouse  is an 2016 American animated comedy slapstick film based on the 2013 Mickey Mouse shorts, which in turn is also based on Mickey Mouse by Walt Disney. It was directed by Paul Rudish (developer of the 2013 shorts in his feature directorial debut) and was written by Rudish, Paul Feig, and Matthew O'Callaghan, and stars the show's regular voice cast of Chris Diamantoupolus, Jacob Tremblay, Tony Anselmo, Russi Taylor, Bill Farmer, Jim Cummings, and April Winchell. The film follows Mickey Mouse getting a visit from his two nephews, while also showing the regular normal day lives of other characters.

The music was composed by Hans Zimmer, with the themes by Christopher Willis, composer of the show. Production began in August 2013, two months after the show's premiere, with Rudish returning to direct while several of the show's cast and crew members would be returning. Tremblay stars in a triple role as Mickey and his nephews Morty and Ferdie. The movie makes references to four films: Transformers 2, The Lion King, James Bond, and Spider-Man 3. The animation was directed by Tony Bancroft, who also co-directed the film. The music was composed by Hans Zimmer, with the themes by Christopher Willis.

Produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios, it is the studio's first 2D animated film to be produced in five years after 2011's Winnie the Pooh, capturing the same animation from the show. The movie premiered in theaters on August 19, 2016 and was met with positive reviews from critics, audiences, and fans alike, praising its animation, references to other films, faithfulness to its source material, performances, soundtrack, and plot, but criticized the runtime and the villain’s backstory. Despite this, the film was a box-office bomb, only grossing $38 million.

The film has largely gained a cult following. The film is decicated in the memory of Alan Young, who died in May 2016.

Synopsis
Mickey and his friends are living normal lives in their beautiful neighborhood. On a bright sunny day, Mickey gets a call from his nephews Morty and Ferdie Fieldmouse saying that they'll come visit him, which they do and Mickey spends quality time with them. After a nuclear accident, Donald, one of Mickey's friends, gains superpowers, which his enemy Pete becomes jealous and Goofy gets a girlfriend. However, an evil person more evil than Mortimer and Pete plans to blow up the entire town with a bomb.

Plot
As the film opens to its title card, it follows the life of Mickey Mouse, who is in a hurry to get to the supermarket as he is told by his best friend Goofy that they're selling free donuts and cheese. After traffic, Mickey calls his scooter (who's name is Scoot) to help him drive. He gets to the supermarket but finds out he is too late, but is offered a donut and a cheese by Goofy, which they sit outside the supermarket and eat them.

Meanwhile, Minnie, Mickey's girlfriend, sets up a date for Mickey, which he promised that he will go on a date with Minnie on Friday. Then, Donald is sitting in his chair at home when Daisy slaps him. Daisy demands Donald to go get a job and stop being lazy. Donald takes this opportunity and decides to go get a job. One job he tries to get is in a pizza palace. Donald eventually gets the job but is soon fired after making a pizza circle. After eating the cheese and donuts with Goofy, Mickey leaves the supermarket only to find Scoot sick. Seeing that the temperature is 57 degrees (as the movie is set in November), Mickey decides to take Scoot home and lets him rest.

A few hours later at 2:00AM, Mickey gets a call from one of his nephews Morty. Morty tells Mickey that he and Ferdie will visit Mickey, must to Mickey's excitment. Mickey asks what time and what day they'll come, but they do not ask and hang up the phone. It than shows a one minute montage of Morty and Ferdie traveling on a cruise, a plane, a rocketship they stole from NASA, and finally, a car to get to Mickey's town. The car eventually runs out of gas. They ask a GPS where a gas station is but unfortunately, there is no gas station nearby, so they have to walk. In a James Bond style, Morty and Ferdie use a boat to get there while Mickey is waiting for them.

Meanwhile, on a far far away cruise (which Morty and Ferdie were not there), Donald is seen sleeping on a chair outside when the cruise trip is done, with everyone, with the exception of Donald, exiting the ship, onto an jungle, taking pictures of a man raised in the jungle. The cruise than leaves. The captain of the ship, Joee (spelled with two ee's), finds Donald on the ship and kicks him to an abandoned island, a nuclear power station, which wakes Donald up. Donald walks into the power plant and is greeted by the boss, Harold, who greets him to the 62 workers at there. Donald eventually signs up for an job application at the power plant, getting $500 a day. Donald, which Harold did not tell him to do anything, looks inside the acid but accidentally falls down in it, causing the power plant to explode, presumably killing Donald,

Than, Morty and Ferdie Fieldmouse arrive at Mickey's home. Mickey is excited for this and spends some quality time with them, including baseball, soccer, Go Fish, and several others. Morty and Ferdie also play with Mickey's pets, Pluto, Gubbles, and Figaro, also meeting Minnie, who reminds them of their date tomorrow.. Goofy than has his son Max (who once appeared in A Goofy Movie and A Extremely Goofy Movie) come over to his house, which Goofy dressed into a gentleman to impress Max. At the statepark, Mickey is teaching Morty and Ferdie how to skateboard. Mickey meets Goofy and Morty and Ferdie bunp into Max, who teaches both of them how to stateboard. Donald opens his eyes and wakes up at an now (really) abandoned destroyed nuclear power plant station where he finds 500 dollars from a cash register and steals it. While going to go home by swimming all the way across the ocean, Donald sees a shark in the ocean and raises his eyes up wide due to being scared, but suddenly, laser comes out of his eyes, and turns the shark into turkey.

Donald, impressed by this, than eats the shark but finds out he has muscles, making him lift up a ship found in the ocean. Donald than jumps and soars to the skies, with him finding out he’s a superhero, since superheroes can fly. Donald shows Mickey and the townsfolk this, which they are impressed. But Pete, Mickey and his friend’s nemesis, gets jealous of this and asks Dr. Ludwig von Drake to help him gain superpowers. Meanwhile, in a underground lab, a evil person named Moksha Bazooka creates a 5 inch sized bomb made to blow up the entire town, as because he was a kid, people always used to blow up his home. Moksha than laughs and drinks water after getting tired of laughing. Ludwig von Drake officially manages to make a potion for Pete

Development
After the positive reception of the first seven Mickey Mouse episodes from the series, a feature TV movie for the show was announced to be in development. Series developer Paul Rudish done the script for the film in five days and pitched the idea to Walt Disney Animation Studios as their first 2D animated film to be produced in five years after the 2011 movie, Winnie the Pooh. According to Rudish, the company switched the idea to a theatrical film because they thought "that the concept would work better for a theatrical film." Production began on an unknown date in August of the same year that the show had premiered on Disney Channel. The film was co-directed by Tony Bancroft, who co-directed Mulan, another Disney movie. Bancroft originally wanted to serve as executive producer. It was also announced that many of the cast and crew members from the show would return for the movie.

The show's character designer Tara Billinger announced that she would be the film's producer along with Mickey, Donald, Goofy: The Three Musketeers director Donovan Cook, in which Cook was also the creator of the Hanna-Barbera TV show, 2 Stupid Dogs. Cook said about the film: "I wanted to join the film because Paul said 'Mickey had several direct-to-video films, why not a theatrical one?' That's what he said." At the Comic-Con 2014, the movie was announced to have some slight production delays but Billinger stated that the film's production would come back together. The film was first foreshadowed in a Disney commercial, saying "Mickey Mouse will be going to theaters!" The line was narrated by Jerry Seinfield. The film was Paul Rudish's feature directorial debut.

Casting
The show's regular voice cast Chris Diamantoupolus, Russi Taylor, Tony Anselmo, Bill Farmer, Tress MacNeille, and Jim Cummings as well as Corey Burton, were announced to reprise their respective roles as their respective characters. A new cast member included Room star Jacob Tremblay as both Morty and Ferdie Fieldmouse.

When Tremblay auditioned for the role against 4,285 kids, he was not told by casting director Judy Taylor that he would be starring in two roles. Tremblay was shocked by this, but agreed for the role because in a interview: he stated: "Mickey Mouse is an iconic character and that's all to say." Director Paul Rudish voiced several characters in the movie, which are listed above in the "Voice cast" section. In the show's Halloween special, "A Mickey Mouse Halloween Spectacular!" featured Morty and Ferdie in it, but however, they were not voiced by Tremblay, as they were voiced by Diamantoupolus. April Winchell voices Clarabelle Cow, a female cow who becomes Goofy's girlfriend.

Alan Young, the voice of Scrooge McDuck (who only says 20 lines in the entire film as has 59 seconds of screen-time) recorded his lines as Scrooge but died in May 2016. The film was dedicated in his memory, with the words at the beginning of the end credits saying, "In Loving Memory of the Original Scrooge McDuck (1919-2016). Rudish said on his death: "Alan was sincerely a kind man, he was cracking jokes, and we had fun with him on set. He will truly be missed."

According to Judy Taylor, it took approximately a month to finish voice recording but it only took two weeks for Tremblay to finish, as he was excited for the role of Morty and Ferdie.