In yet another very distinctively themed animated short from the many and varied yet overall excellent Disney "Silly Symphonies" series, we get to see all kinds of timepieces dance and be merry in-time to charming music, which like any good Symphony, the short is entirely built around. And the musical theme that is featured here if you didn't know, was done by one Charles Orth and is appropriately titled: "In a Clock Store." Go figure! The look of the shop and some of the clocks reminded me a lot of the fantastic opening sequence of "Pinocchio" with all of Gepetto's magical clockwork wonders, the only part of "Basil the Great Mouse Detective" that I can comfortably say I love with the toystore sequence, and the uppity anthropomorphic clock character Cogsworth of "Beauty and the Beast" fame so many years later! It was a very cute and interesting idea for a short, but they didn't really do all that much with it, I thought. And the animation was okay, although in this case I thought the lack of colour hurt the short and held back the quality a lot. It just seemed kind of standard and plain to me. I would say that the main highlight for me was definitely the impressive realistic graceful motions of the two amazingly lifelike ballroom dancers - at the time the most detailed and human-looking figures yet to be seen in a Disney animation. There is the most brilliantly effortless sense of flow to their movements... It's a flawless little wedding of animated imagery and sound. Oh my, look at the time...gotta go!
Review of The Clock Store
