Susie, the Little Blue Coupe (1952)

This is a very neat Silly Symphony, following the life story about a little blue coupe named Susie. The plot takes you on an intriguing and entertaining look at the life of Susie, from her first purchase to her traffic adventures, and from her declining motor health to her stop on the junkyard. The cartoon has great, colorful animation, and nice narration from Winnie-the-Pooh voice actor Sterling Holloway. There's also a nice mixture of comedy and touching moments. Great Silly Symphony!Grade A

This charming tiny movie is a minor Disney classic, one of their best pieces in my opinion but unfortunately one of their lesser known works either – which is a shame. At least some appreciators of Disney classics seem to be rediscovering (if not discovering) this forgotten little classic now. I'm glad about that.Susie is an anthropomorphic little car. She is very sympathetic, harmless and, like a dog, she has lots of love to give and promises eternal loyalty. Her facial expressions are so cute, so sympathetic and so sincere. She is born in our world as happy as she can be. When she is a brand new car, she wins the heart of her buyer. But her happiness doesn't last that long. With time she shows signs of her age and develops mechanical problems. Her owner decides to exchange her for another car. Her second owner treats her pretty poorly by letting her freeze in the cold outside and paying very little attention to her maintenance. Susie feels depressed and humiliated. She even becomes a stolen car, gets in trouble and ends up thrown into a junkyard. Luckily, a young man wants her, buys her and does her a massive restoration, transforming her into a hotrod.Sterling Holloway is practically the voice of the whole short. Most of all, he narrates the story, but he also voices Susie. Even though Susie doesn't talk, Sterling provides her very few lines from her perspective.The idea of a sympathetic car with a mind of its own and its transformations and such is a concept that was latter applied to Herbie (the friendly Volkswagen Beetle) and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (another remarkable cinema automobile).This little film can be considered a precursor of Disney-Pixar's "Cars" for its global details, methods and details of anthropomorphizing the cars.Title in Portugal: I haven't the slightest idea.

If you would like to see this gem of a film, it appears as a bonus on the DVD of Disney's "Ichabod and Mr. Toad", but you have to work for it. On the menu, go to "games" and take the trivia test. If you answer all the questions correct, you will be treated with a viewing of "Suzie, the Little Blue Coupe"! If you are a fan of the children's books by Bill Peet, you will love this story. Before Peet was a published author, he was one of the top story men at Disney. Not only did he work on classic features like "Dumbo", "Sleeping Beauty", "Peter Pan" and "Lady and the Tramp", he also wrote a number of short films like "Suzie". These include: "Goliath II" (the story of a 6 inch tall elephant) and "Lambert the Sheepish Lion". His storytelling sensibilities are unmistakable in these films and bear his mark like a signature. Peet left Disney around 1965 to write children's books. He died in 2002.

A Walt Disney Cartoon.Sweet & stylish, SUSIE THE LITTLE BLUE COUPE lives a happy life with her owner until wear & tear makes him trade her in for a younger model.This is a very agreeable little film, with plenty of good humor & fine animation and once again illustrates Disney's adeptness at giving sympathetic life to an inanimate object. Susie's story was written by Disney animator Bill Peet and is very similar to those he would later author as a celebrated children's author. As always, Sterling Holloway makes the perfect narrator.Walt Disney (1901-1966) was always intrigued by pictures & drawings. As a lad in Marceline, Missouri, he sketched farm animals on scraps of paper; later, as an ambulance driver in France during the First World War, he drew comic figures on the sides of his vehicle. Back in Kansas City, along with artist Ub Iwerks, Walt developed a primitive animation studio that provided animated commercials and tiny cartoons for the local movie theaters. Always the innovator, his ALICE IN CARTOONLAND series broke ground in placing a live figure in a cartoon universe. Business reversals sent Disney & Iwerks to Hollywood in 1923, where Walt's older brother Roy became his lifelong business manager & counselor. When a mildly successful series with Oswald The Lucky Rabbit was snatched away by the distributor, the character of Mickey Mouse sprung into Walt's imagination, ensuring Disney's immortality. The happy arrival of sound technology made Mickey's screen debut, STEAMBOAT WILLIE (1928), a tremendous audience success with its use of synchronized music. The SILLY SYMPHONIES soon appeared, and Walt's growing crew of marvelously talented animators were quickly conquering new territory with full color, illusions of depth and radical advancements in personality development, an arena in which Walt's genius was unbeatable. Mickey's feisty, naughty behavior had captured millions of fans, but he was soon to be joined by other animated companions: temperamental Donald Duck, intellectually-challenged Goofy and energetic Pluto. All this was in preparation for Walt's grandest dream - feature length animated films. Against a blizzard of doomsayers, Walt persevered and over the next decades delighted children of all ages with the adventures of Snow White, Pinocchio, Dumbo, Bambi & Peter Pan. Walt never forgot that his fortunes were all started by a mouse, or that childlike simplicity of message and lots of hard work will always pay off.