If I were Minnie (Leone Le Doux, apparently for the last time?), I’d be frustrated at the state of my relationship even before this short. My boyfriend would rather live a happy bachelor life with his dog than move things forward with me. Not that I think marriage is necessarily the be-all and end-all of a woman’s life—as it happens, my partner and I aren’t married. But we’ve had conversations about the state of our relationship, and we’ve lived together for a very long time. Minnie mostly seems to exist to be there when he needs her and not when he’s off doing happy bachelor things with his dog, and I wouldn’t stand for that.
This time, he’s forgotten a date. Minnie is patiently waiting for a solid hour while Mickey (Walt, for the last time) is dozing in his armchair. The phone rings, and the dog (Jimmy MacDonald) answers. When Minnie finally gets him on the phone, it turns out he’s forgotten their date. She gives him an ultimatum—fifteen minutes or they’re through. Mickey gets dressed quickly, but in his rush, he forgets the tickets, and Pluto has to chase after him with them. Oh, and it turns out that, even after remembering the date, he’s forgotten what they’re planning to do.
How angry would all this make you? Your partner forgets about you. You spend a solid hour standing outside waiting for him, and he’s flat-out forgotten you have a date and has been asleep this whole time. And either he’ll admit he’d forgotten what your plans were or else he’s lying to you, and I don’t think the lie would hold up for long, all things considered. There’s a lot going on in this short, and none of it would make me more kindly disposed toward Mickey were I Minnie.
I get that we’re supposed to be thinking about Mickey’s perspective, but I just don’t have sympathy for him on this one. He’s not doing something important. He’s not running a little late. He’s not ready for what he’s supposed to be doing and just drifting off for a minute. He’s not been shown to have had a long and tiring day. He’s being neglectful of his girlfriend, and he’s even the one with the tickets, which presumably means he’s the one who made the plans in the first place. Though it’s 1947, so it’s entirely possible it was her idea but social conventions meant he paid.
It’s been eleven years since Minnie had another option, and Mortimer was terrible in every way. She never would again—this is her last appearance in a Mickey Mouse short from this era, and while she did a couple of Pluto shorts and a couple of cameos, she didn’t even get any lines in “Mickey’s Christmas Carol.” Whatever Mickey did in the years to come, it would mostly be without Minnie. I’d be angry about that, too.
