Donald Duck is a reactionary character and thus his features are best when there's either a situation or other characters with whom he can interact (usually angrily). In fact it's fun to contrast the sunniness of Mickey Mouse with the downright stormy Donald, and those who aver that Disney only ever presents spoonfuls of sugar-coated goodness for mass consumption had better take another long look at Donald Duck. Has there ever been a more contrary, angry and even downright mean character that has caught the public's fancy the way Donald has (aside from certain Fox News commentators, that is)? Somehow his tantrums make him all the more lovable, probably only because he ends up doing damage to himself when his temper gets the best of him. It's all the more remarkable when you consider that other Disney stalwarts like the venerable Mickey Mouse and Goofy had their series shut down in the early 50s, but that Donald soldiered on for almost another ten years.

One way or the other, this great collection offers a wonderful supply of foils for Donald, probably none better than the equally impish chipmunk duo of Chip and Dale. It was some sort of mad genius to pair Donald with this daffy duo, and the results are consistently hilarious. Again it's a testament to the sweetness of the Disney approach that neither the chipmunks nor Donald lose their affability even when they're all involved in trying to quite literally kill each other. The Disney story whizzes work overtime here crafting one perfectly executed sight gag after another throughout each of these great features.

Also on tap are several CinemaScope features, three offering Donald doing National Park duty with a mischevious and somewhat dimwitted bear named Humphrey (think Yogi without the brains, pic-a-nic baskets or Boo-Boo). While these don't quite have the gag quotient of the Chip 'n' Dale features, they offer an expansive vista that's unusual for animated features of this era and therefore provide at least a lot to look at. From a design standpoint, these are a fascinating lot, showing Disney's slow push into a more modern style that would culminate at the end of the decade with the feature film Sleeping Beauty.

Taken together, the four volumes of The Chronological Donald offer an unparalleled window into the art of feature animation and how it evolved over the course of several decades. Just seeing the character design of Donald himself change through the years is instructive as to how Disney refined and reimagined their "product" (as loathe as I am to describe Donald that way) as time went on. This fourth volume may well be the apex of the series, with some of the funniest, and most visually spectacular, offerings in the entire Donald canon.

Disc One:

Dude Duck (1951)
Corn Chips (1951)
Test Pilot Donald (1951)
Lucky Number (1951)
Out of Scale (1951)
Be On Guard (1951)
Donald Applecore (1952)
Let's Stick Together (1952)
Trick or Treat (1952)
Don's Fountain of Youth (1953)
The New Neighbor (1953)
Working for Peanuts (1953)
Canvas Back Duck (1953)

Disc One Bonus Features include "Donald Goes to Press," a nice review of Donald Duck comic book efforts, "The Unseen Donald Duck: Trouble Shooters," a fun "pitch session" featuring storyboards from a shelved 1946 Donald short, and an informative commentary by Disney mainstay Leonard Maltin, as well as Jerry Beck, on "Working for Peanuts", describing its 3D version.

Disc One From the Vault includes two "politically incorrect" shorts (racial stereotyping is the culprit), surprisingly from the 1950s, Uncle Donald's Ants (1952) and Rugged Bear (1953).

Disc Two

Donald's Diary (1954)
Dragon Around (1954)
Grin and Bear It (1954)
The Flying Squirrel (1954)
Grand Canyonscope (1954)
Bearly Asleep (1955)
Beezy Bear (1955)
Up a Tree (1955)
Chips Ahoy (1956)
How to Have an Accident in the Home (1956)
Donald in Mathmagic Land (1959)
Donald and the Wheel (1961)
The Litterbug (1961)

Disc Two Bonus Features include "Disney's Mickey Mouseworks Cartoons," modern day attempts to recreate the heyday of Donald and company, and an Audio Commentary (again by Maltin and Beck) on "Grand Canyonscope," one of the CinemaScope cartoons offered herein, and one that benefits immensely from the graphics-based animation of Eyvind Earle.

Disc Two's From the Vault includes Spare The Rod (1954), No Hunting (1955) and How to Have an Accident at Work (1959). I frankly had to wonder what we were supposed to find offensive about the last one, the millisecond of faux Chinese wisdom or the ongoing parody of a country yokel in the guise of Fate.

The DVD

Video:
All of the features save the CinemaScope offerings are in full frame 1.33:1 ratios. The CinemaScope offerings are in enhanced transfers. Generally the images presented across this decade worth of material is quite excellent, though some of the older features show some evidence of having been digitally scrubbed. There's very occasional scratching here and there, as well as abundant (natural) grain in the older releases.

Sound:
Again, most of these features had an original mono soundtrack, repurposed here for 2.0 sound, all of which sound fine if at times just slightly compressed and boxy. The CinemaScope features offered state of the art stereo, with some great sound gags, notably in "Grand Canyonscope," which offers lots of opportunities for directional echoes. All of the soundtracks sound quite good, though of course Donald himself is near-incomprehensible most of the time. For that, the optional English subtitles are heaven sent.

Final Thoughts:
This fourth volume of Donald Duck shorts is probably the best of the lot, with some fun and unusual cartoons mixed with some of Donald's latter-day educational efforts. As beautifully packaged as all the other Disney Treasures, this has the content to support the fancy trappings, and is a DVD Talk Collector Series title.

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"G-d made stars galore" & "Hey, what kind of a crappy fortune is this?" ZMK, modern prophet