The Standard Parade (1939) User Reviews

Nothing all that special but has its interest value

[TheLittleSongbird · 7/10 · 18 November 2012]

The Standard Parade is never going to be one of my favourite Disney shorts. While not unexpected, it is very light in story and structurally thin. For those more familiar with razor sharp pacing and laugh-a-minute gags, look elsewhere, there is not much that is funny here and the pace lacks energy I feel, then again in all fairness The Standard Parade is not that kind of short. Toby the Tortoise is a pleasure to see, Disney's Tortoise and the Hare is one of their shorts I have a lot of fondness for, though he is coloured in an unusually brown colour, which may strike people as odd. The animation is great though, very colourful and bouncy and it was interesting to see Mickey and Minnie leading the parade in their new look. The music is largely re-used but is orchestrated beautifully and has much character. The Standard Parade does convey a message and does so in a manner that doesn't come across as preachy, but it was the Disney characters that were the main interest and this is not just Mickey, Minnie, Donald and Goofy and Pluto but also The Seven Dwarfs, The Three Pigs, Big Bad Wolf and Toby Tortoise and they are all fun to watch. Overall, not a favourite but interesting at least. 7/10 Bethany Cox

When guys go to business meetings . . .

[cricket30 · 6/10 · 6 March 2022]

. . . their attention tends to wander. It's not hard to see why in this our Modern 21st Century "Standard Oil" has long since gone kaput. Back in the benighted 1900's, what passed for the marketing department of this one-time lucrative organization blew big bucks commissioning the Ditsy Company to produce an "in-house" promotional film to rouse up those nodding off at their next business convention. Inexplicably, Ditsy took Standard's money and ran, beginning THE STANDARD PARADE with an unrelated black & white history lesson about Ditsy guaranteed to put the gathered suits to sleep. Color does not show up until six minutes into this fiasco! Nor is there ANY mention of Standard until then! What a misfire!

How Walt became Disney

[Horst_In_Translation · 8/10 · 19 November 2017]

"The Standard Parade" is a 7.5-minute short film from 1939, so this one will soon have its 80th anniversary. It was directed by Riley Thomson, a successful, but short-lived Disney animator. This one tells us in the most compact and concise way possible Walt Disney's rise to fame in Hollywood, the struggles during his early days and his greatest successes in terms of short and full feature films and how technology (such as (Techni)color) was a huge part of it. At one point the narrator says that Disney won 8 Academy Awards already and how that was a record, so looking at his eventually 22 wins, you could sure say that the best was yet tome. After all, Disney wasn't even 40 when this was made. And despite some of the smear campaigns against him, mostly in a cowardly manner after his death, there is no denying how much of a multi-talented man he was. Be it as an artist, as a businessman or simply as one of the most impactful men of the 20th century. I think this little short film here could have been a bit longer as it did feel slightly rushed at times, but nonetheless it was a good watch, actually a relatively great watch even. With the parade at the ending it is basically a rare mix of color and b&w as well as animation and live action in the same film, even if I would not say people are entirely wrong when they say this is two films in one. The last part is admittedly only really interesting from the perspective of advertising in the first half of the 20th century, even if it was still nice to see all these beloved characters at once, maybe even more back then than today. If you love Disney cartoons, this is an absolute must-see. Big thumbs-up here.