Cinema: Disney Double

The Ugly Dachshund is actually a Great Dane pup named Brutus. Hubby Dean Jones surreptitiously plants Brutus in a litter of “dachsies” belonging to Wife Suzanne Pleshette, who refers to herself and the little darlings as “I and the girls.” Any other movie would proceed at once to the indicated psychoanalysis, but Walt Disney prefers to describe how Brutus devastates the household and resolves his identity crisis by winning Best of Breed in the dog show. Such comedies as this one are too wholesome for kids, too foolish for dog fanciers, and a sure way to persuade young adults that movies filled with sex and violence can’t be all bad.

Winnie the Pooh and The Honey Tree turns the Disney animaters loose on a tribute to A. A. Milne’s classic storybook characters. The drawings are a rough but not treasonable facsimile of the famous Shepard illustrations, pleasantly introducing Kanga, Roo, Eeyore, Owl and Rabbit. It is the voices that sound dead wrong. Speaking for Pooh, Comedian Sterling Holloway makes Christopher Robin’s friend seem a dry American, as if the world of Milne had collided in Disneyland with the world of Twain. And Pooh purists will certainly wince at a new batch of song lyrics, starting with “a tubby little cubby all stuffed with fluff” and ending with conceits even more unbearable.