Mumbai Madness
I realize that almost all animated cartoons are narratives, but I can't resist including this particularly imaginative Mickey Mouse adventure, fraught with religious symbolism, set in India:
Click the image to see Mumbai Madness
After you have watched Mumbai Madness, close that page to return here.
An overview of Mumbai Madness:
• The Cameo:
◦ Several characters from The Jungle Book appear briefly.
◦ The 4 vultures Buzzie, Dizzy, Ziggy & Flaps appear sitting on a tree branch in the desert.
◦ King Louie and his monkeys chase after Mickey's taxi during the travel montage.
• Crowd Song: Mickey deliberately invokes this to clear the road of cows by breaking into a Bollywood-style song-and-dance.
• Flying Car: The short ends with Mickey getting a vimāna to replace his destroyed three-wheeler.
• Fun with Subtitles: When Mickey and the elephant are stranded in the desert, the words "17 hours later" appears at the bottom of the screen. A Hindi translation appears under it.
• God Was My Copilot: The short ends with the implication that the elephant is Ganesha.
• Shown Their Work: The elephant's true identity is revealed by a number of subtle signs throughout the short: the broken tusk, the very fact that Mickey gets lost and confronts endless obstacles before finally achieving his goal with the elephant's help, and the fact that the elephant chooses to get in a taxi driven by a mouse. Ganesha has a broken tusk, is the god who places obstacles and removes them for the faithful, and rides on a (size-shifting) mouse.
