Runaway Brain (Disney 1995 Short) Film Review

Added: 2026-05-25

[00:00:00]Hey folks, this is Matt once again.

[00:00:02]Welcome back to another video and this is a paid request for Lucas. Thank you so much for that. For those interested requests in any type of videos, movie reviews, re-reviews, random thoughts, streams, commentaries, tier list, whatever the case may be, feel free to send it either directly to my PayPal. Do have a cash app as well. Links are down below in the info box and I will get to it as soon as I possibly can. And this is for Runaway Brain, a 1995 short film by Disney. Now, when I say short, I mean it's like seven minutes long. And did you find it on YouTube pretty easily? Just type in Runaway Brain Mickey Mouse. And this is one I had heard of for a while, but just never got around to seeing it. And thought it was fun. I liked it. I thought it was fun. I mean, it's only seven minutes, so it goes by pretty quick. The colors at times are pretty vibrant, especially the red reddish hue in the third act of it.

[00:00:56]has a little bit of darker aspects to it, which was nice and surprising.

[00:01:01]And apparently at the time for Disney, this is like a bit controversial.

[00:01:05]I don't [ __ ] know why.

[00:01:09]Oh, some kids were scared. If they were scared of this, they're [ __ ] They need to man up. When I'm 70 years old, I'm watching Predator and Aliens. Like, they need to man up then if this was staring them. Stop being such a [ __ ] But apparently [snorts] this was in front of a kid in Teen Arthur's Tor when that went in theaters.

[00:01:31]I think in Europe when a Goofy movie came out there, this was in front of it.

[00:01:35]And there might have been a couple other films by this Inside Disney.

[00:01:41]Well, first off, apparently first it was going to be like a Roger Roger Rabbit short and then they changed it to Mickey Mouse. And it makes sense just Mickey Mouse has been pretty underutilized when you looked at how many films have actually been made with Mickey Mouse, let alone short films. Not a whole lot throughout the years. I mean, you had the there's the Christmas tarot one Mickey Mouse was in.

[00:02:06]You got like I think what the present of the popper there's bits here and there.

[00:02:11]I remember the TV show House of Mouse, which was cute because all the Disney characters kind of congregated in this like nightclub. Remember that being kind of fun, wondering who was going to pop up there?

[00:02:30]And then apparently there's going to be another story where Mickey and Donald were on vacation and Donald kept trying to kill Mickey Mouse, which that actually kind of would have been kind of funny to see how that would come about.

[00:02:43]But Mickey Mouse, imagine a Pixar style movie, a Wall-E, Finding Nemo, or hell, even if that just Pixar like Zootopia, like any of those kind of movies, but with Mickey Mouse as an actual three-dimensional character.

[00:03:09]And they never did that. To this day, they still never did that. Like, okay, Disney, you worked on you Zoo, Zootopia, and all this other stuff. Why don't you do a movie with Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy?

[00:03:28]You don't have to make it mature. You don't have to have them like they have [ __ ] somebody. No, you don't need I'm talking about is Disney, but you just tell them make them what you know characters, likes, dislikes, personalities, ups and downs of the character and they never do it. They never did. I don't know why. I mean, you had a goofy movie, you had other stuff, but it's just strange. And you think Mickey Mouse being kind of the icon of Disney, they do more with him and they [ __ ] don't. And the few times you see Mickey Mouse, he's pretty bland. He's the voice guy. He's got the high pitched voice, which I'm not even going to try because I screw up my voice, my throat, but they do nothing with them. I'm like, come on, use them. Utilize them more.

[00:04:23]And I thought this was kind of cool where okay Mickey and Minnie Mickey Mouse is playing a video game which I thought was cool first off that he's playing a video game and it's a video game that's kind of like Mortal Kombat but it's Dopey from Snow White fighting I think the Witch. So you can see the screen and like the way the health bars are and the 2D. Yeah, it reminds me of Street Fighter Mortal Kombat styles. I thought that was kind of funny.

[00:04:52]He's halfass listening to Minnie talking about they have an anniversary. Mitty forgot. Minnie gets upset. Mitti's like, "Oh, well, here's this." And shows what he thinks is a picture of a golf, but she sees the picture of Hawaii down below. And then Mitti's like, "Oh shit."

[00:05:12]He didn't say that, but he thinks it.

[00:05:15]And it's like, "Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:05:18]I'll get that taken care of." than figuring out how he's going to get like the $1,000 for the trip. Pluto the dog, hey, there's a shows him the newspaper. Oh, there's a an ad.

[00:05:34]So, Mickey goes there. I kind of thought this was cool. They did a visual homage to the exorcist like when Bachonor arrived. The poster shot. the poster shot of the exorcist with him looking up. That's they do that shot with Mickey kind of looking up at where he needs to go. I thought that was kind of cool. And he goes and he falls to this trap. Now again, it goes by very quick because we only got seven minutes and he falls to the trap of this doctor which is this monkey voiced by Telsey Grammar. I'm like, "Oh [ __ ] is that Telsey Grammar?" Say Bob, it is you know Frasier. So that was cool. I mean, he doesn't have a whole lot to say, but for a little bit he's in, that's cool.

[00:06:20]And he has this big giant monstrous creature and he's going to switch their brains. So, as Mickey's tied up, throw the switch, brains are switched, minds, I should say, minds are switched. And so Mickey, he's in this giant creature body and he looks down and Mickey, the body's now this monstrous creature, Starland, all this other stuff. And he's trying to stop it, but it runs off and first looks at Mickey's wallet. I They do a reference to Steamboat Willie.

[00:07:00]Oh, that's an old picture. And then Minnie Mouse. So creatures thou hone in on Minnie Mouse and don't search for her.

[00:07:08]One kind of pretty dark violent bit is they the doctor Kelsey Grammer's character, the old the the body Mickey's in now finds the doctor tries to wake him up, but when he picks him up, the bones fall out of him. So it's just like bones and dust falls down. I'm like, "Oh [ __ ] he's returned the bones." I just I thought that, "Wow, that's surprisingly violent.

[00:07:40]I just didn't expect that."

[00:07:44]So then when we cut to the monster in Mickey Mouse's body, search for Minnie.

[00:07:52]Minnie has a bikini cuz she's dressing for the vacation and she's like, "Not till we're on the boat."

[00:08:03]Yeah. So, you going to have some fun geted into the house of mouse is going to be anyway maybe more and more multiply and populated.

[00:08:21][snorts] So, I guess maybe people could look as like, wow, okay, Mickey Mouse is horned up and wants the [ __ ] But like, no, it's it's a monstrous figure in Mickey Mouse's body going to m to Minnie who happens to be holding bikini that she hasn't put on yet.

[00:08:48]Mickey in the big body, giant body grabs it. Minnie doesn't know what's going on, so he thinks Mickey is the monster.

[00:08:55]Eventually, she finds out. There's a bit of a chase scene where eventually Mickey and the Mickey Mouse body and Mickey and the giant body, they both fall. They hit these wires and they electrocute. They switch brains.

[00:09:15]The giant the creature's batting his giant body grabbing Minnie Mouse. Mickey gets like a window squeegee. Cats it like a shotgun.

[00:09:27]Let her go. And gets to be a bit of a badass at some point. Gets to be a bit of a hero. He does his pole vault and gets the w rope and swings around the the guy the creature. Swings it around to tie him up. Minnie's fallen. Minty's like Minnie goes slow-mo. You have this red hue around the with the animation.

[00:09:51]Saves Minnie Mouse.

[00:09:53]So, he gets to be like the adventurer swinging around with the rope. He gets to be the hero saving Minnie.

[00:10:01]Like, very rarely do you get to see Mickey Mouse this badass.

[00:10:06]Now, sure, it would have been cool to see him like fight and punch and kit the the creature, too.

[00:10:13]But again, we only have seven minutes.

[00:10:15]And that's really my only problem. I wish this was longer. I wish this was this was a longer 30 minute at least film.

[00:10:24]7 minutes. I thought it was just too short. And you know me, usually I complain about the length and something being too long. That's what she said.

[00:10:32]Well, no, they won't say it's too long.

[00:10:35]They just complain it's too short. But I haven't had that problem anyway.

[00:10:40]But yeah, I just I wish there was a longer and that's the thing like it ends with Mickey save Minnie and they use the creature to swim them to Hawaii and everything's fine. The animation's good.

[00:10:54]I like the use of the lighting, especially the red hue and the third act of the story. Mickey Mouse used to be a bit of a badass. I do like the monster design of the Mickey Mouse body which is just crazed and evil.

[00:11:11]It's just everything's rushed because of the small running time. So things aren't able to breathe and really sink into the situation.

[00:11:22]And again, that's my only problem. But for a short film, I thought this was pretty good. It was fun. It was fast-paced. I got some chuckles out of it.

[00:11:32]And I apparently people at Disney some people were had I don't know their time of the month or something.

[00:11:44]It's like we can't do things like this anymore. This is too too much. Too much to give Mickey Mouse something to [ __ ] do since you're not doing anything with him.

[00:11:58]So, I guess some people at Disney felt this was a failure.

[00:12:03]And I'm like, well, number one, it's a short film.

[00:12:08]I guess failure as in we don't like how I mean, when you say dark, it's not like Mickey, you know, ripping heads off and drinking the blood of virgins or whatever. I mean, I don't know. Daisy are [ __ ] stupid. They consistently have made stupid decisions for a long time.

[00:12:28]Just look where Marvel's at, Disney's at, all these places are at nowadays.

[00:12:34]So, even back then, some of them were [ __ ] stupid.

[00:12:40]And again, you have all these characters, all these cartoon characters of yester year. If you did talented people, I remember there was Okay, I gotta look this up because I know I did not imagine this.

[00:13:02]Forgive me.

[00:13:06]Whatever happened to the movie where it was going to be a road trip with Mickey Mouse and Roger Rabbit?

[00:13:21]Yeah.

[00:13:23]A buddy comedy road trip starring Mickey Mouse and Roger Rabbit is going to be in the nod to like the Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis comedies of yester year.

[00:13:43]Mity and Roger team up in the 40s and 50s for a road trip with Roger acting as a struggling performer trying to break into the show business.

[00:14:02][sighs] My god, man.

[00:14:13]So, no, we're not going to do that.

[00:14:14]We're going to do all this other stupid [ __ ] like that. I would have been interested in. I know I didn't make that up. I know I wasn't just like some fever dream that just popped in my head.

[00:14:31]Didn't do that. Didn't [ __ ] do that.

[00:14:33]So, that just It's a shame.

[00:14:40]It's a shame that you have this character you to utilize and maybe develop more so he doesn't come off as just a bland character. Like he didn't come off bland in this.

[00:14:53]He didn't have enough time to do a whole lot more. But I don't know.

[00:15:01]It's just a shame.

[00:15:06]But yeah, I like the way it looked. I like the nod to the exorcist with that shot. Kelsey Grammar, very brief, but nice to hear his voice. The other voices did well, too. You have a little bit of action in there. A little bit of dark vibe to it.

[00:15:24]At the end of the finale, I wish he was able to attack, beat up the monster more or at all. He pretty much just ties him up. But maybe that was a compromise.

[00:15:34]Maybe was like, "Hey, we only got this amount of time. We can't do a whole lot with it.

[00:15:42]But it was fun. It was fun to see it.

[00:15:45]And yeah, if Disney really has a bug up their ass about this, just be Oh, it's banned. I mean, I think it was on some phys physical releases.

[00:15:59]I forget what they're called. There might have been some collections that they were on.

[00:16:06]I but I again you t it's not too hard to find like you find on YouTube.

[00:16:12]So there you go. But yeah, if you never seen it, you like Mickey Mouse is definitely worth a look. Especially if you want to watch around the Halloween season or such.

[00:16:23]I say I would I just wanted it longer. I wanted to see more of the the monster version of Mickey Mouse and you know what more you could have done with it as the real Mickey's trying to stop it or trying to figure out what to do next.

[00:16:38]And maybe Goofy and Donald are helping Mickey and they think this is the real Mitty. They realize it's not the real Mitty. So Goofy and Donald are fighting the monstrous Mitty.

[00:16:55]you like some more characters from the universe like that.

[00:16:59]I mean, if you if you worked it, I would I mean, you could make this a full movie kind of like Scooby-Doo and the reluctant werewolf where Shaggy turns into a werewolf.

[00:17:12]I would like to have seen a movie like that. You know, this actually wouldn't have been a bad falling film. sad it's only a short film, but it is what it is.

[00:17:27]With that said, thanks for watching.

[00:17:28]Take care and we will see you in the next video.

[00:17:32]Bye-bye for now.