Paul Bunyan Reviews

Unlike "The Saga of Windwagon Smith," it's completely understandable why this one has an extended running time. It tells all of Paul Bunyan's life story, or, rather, the Disney version of it.

"Paul Bunyan" has a cute and catchy little theme song, and a unique and individual animation style. Highly angular and prone to odd angles and impressionistic backgrounds, "Paul Bunyan" doesn't really look the rest of the Disney short films. Maybe the others in the American folklore series, but this one has a uniform style that makes it highly clear that this is all one, fully realized world.

There's not much of a dramatic arch to the film, which is fine if they had just let it be a character piece and nothing more, but the last five minutes seeks to introduce modernity and all of the technology that it breeds into the events. Of course Bunyan is beaten and viewed as a relic of things past, and this routine story line is trotted out for all its worth. But was it really needed in the grand scheme of the film? It worked better as episodic moments strung together by a musical refrain.

"Paul Bunyan" is smart enough not to develop Bunyan as an individualized personality, instead relying upon the anecdotes given by various people who knew him at different stages in his life. It's a nice tip of the hat to how the myth of Bunyan came about and works to remind us of perceptions of people and events. If the film had continued to follow along that path and removed the needless swerve into a different lane it would have easily ranked among the greatest of Disney's animated shorts.