Cumulative rating:	(1 rating submitted)

Synopsis

Characters

Donald Duck (Voice: Clarence "Ducky" Nash) Daisy Duck

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Distributor(s)

RKO Radio Pictures

The Mickey Mouse Club (Season 1, Episode 43)

The Mickey Mouse Club (Season 2, Episode 5)

United States

Daisy

Germany

Donald Ich bin der Größte

That's Donald

France

Donald Vedette de Television

Italy

Paperina

Paperina

La Storia de Paperino

Paperino Piume Guai e Simpatia

Pippo Pluto Paperino Supershow

Io Paperino

United States

Daisy

Japan

Daisy

Donald Duck and His Duckling Gang

Japan

Merry Christmas

This is Your Life Donald Duck

United States

The Chronological Donald: Volume 3: 1947-1950

Classic Cartoon Favorites : Volume 10 : Best Pals : Donald and Daisy

Germany

Donalds Spassfabrik

Disney Treasures : Wave 7 : The Chronological Donald Volume 3

France

Walt Disney's Rigolons avec Donald

United Kingdom

Walt Disney's Laugh Factory with Donald

Canada

Classic Cartoon Favorites : Volume 11 : Best Pals : Donald and Daisy

Running Time: 7:14

MPAA No.: 11267

Animation Type: Standard (Hand-drawn-Cel) Animation

Aspect Ratio: 1.37 : 1

Cinematographic Format: Spherical

Color Type: Technicolor

Negative Type: 35mm

Original Country: United States

Original Language: English

Print Type: 35mm

Sound Type: Mono: RCA Sound Recording

Reviews and Comments

From Ryan :

I have not seen this short for a long time. Nevertheless, I remember quite a bit of it. I enjoyed the part where Donald is sleepwalking through the zoo and Daisy is running after him. The ring that Donald was giving to Daisy lands on a female ape's toe. Daisy pulls it off but the female ape thinks her husband is trying to pull the ring off and gets upset. Daisy follows Donald through many other obstacles such as heavy traffic. Daisy has to jump on the traffic light and change it to STOP. Great short with lots of fun gags.

From Candi Bear :

This short is really funny. I liked the way Donald seems to know where his walking with his eyes closed and he can just slip through troubles that are like, YOU CANT DO THAT, like walking upside down and walking on the wall. But over all its a good short its a classic.

From Baruch Weiss :

I think that this short's okay. I enjoyed the scene where Donald puts a ring on a tree branch and it lands on a female monkeys finger who thinks that her husband gave it to her, then Donald takes it off and of course the monkey thought it was her husband that did that then she smacks him!

From Ryan Kilpatrick at The Disney Film Project :

It’s very difficult to come up with new ways to talk about Donald Duck every day, when you write about his shorts 2-3 times a week. So I sort of understand what the Disney animators had to be going through when creating Donald Duck cartoons during the mid-1940s. It had to be a problem to find new things for him to do, but Sleepy Time Donald was not the answer.

This is a short of Donald sleepwalking. That’s it. There is not much more to it. Now, I know I have seen this sort of thing before in shorts, even if it may have been something that came after this. There is no originality or fun in this short that we have seen in the recent efforts of 1947.

Instead, we are treated to scene after scene of Donald walking blindly into trouble, while Daisy chases after him to try and save him. It makes for some less than inspiring humor. We have Daisy keeping Donald out of traffic, getting him down from walls and making sure that he doesn’t walk off a building. All of this because of the premise that waking him up would be more dangerous!

This leads to another question: how does being asleep help Donald defy the laws of physics? For some reason, Donald the sleepwalker is able to walk on buildings, walk upside down on the roof and basically defy gravity. How is that even possible? Is it because he is unaware that he’s supposed to fall? While that brings up a great philosophical argument, it is strange in the concept of a cartoon.

The basic problem, though, comes back to the fact that this short is just not interesting. For a short diversion to watch Donald be silly, it’s fine. Unfortunately it doesn’t measure up to the things we have seen Donald experience in the past. I think back to things like Modern Inventions and even the recent Straight Shooters, and Sleepy Time Donald doesn’t measure up.