Sport Goofy in Soccermania (aka Release The Van Citters Cut)

The 1980s are not, generally speaking, regarded as the finest hour in the annals of Disney history (and not at all unjustly either), and yet it the era is a fascinating one in terms of watching the company go through utter turmoil in an effort to find its place in the modern age, having spent the bulk of the 1970s adhering to the same old formula while the rest of Hollywood was moving in fresh and exciting directions. There were plenty of false starts and misfires along the way (the most infamous being the box office disaster of The Black Cauldron in 1985) with the result that the decade has no shortage of weird outliers that just don't fit with the trajectory on which the Mouse House ultimately settled. Besides The Black Cauldron (which, incidentally, is nowhere near as naff as its reputation suggests and I don't recommend that you sleep on it), you have your pick of any of the company's early experiments in PG-rated fare, before the creation of the Touchstone label in 1984 (Ron W. Miller, whom history has judged as a most ineffectual CEO, was responsible for that particular innovation), The Wuzzles, Disney's fledging attempt at establishing an Saturday morning cartoon series AND a toy line to rival the Care Bears (I revisited that in late 2020, and I'm not exaggerating when I say that at least 70% of the jokes are cracks at the rabbit-hippopotamus hybrid's weight), Fluppy Dogs, another merchandise-based cartoon that never got further than its pilot, and the 1983 computer-generated demo for their abandoned take on Where The Wild Things Are. One of the greatest misfits of the lot, however, might be Sport Goofy in Soccermania, a thoroughly inoffensive twenty-minute short focussing on Goofy (voice of Tony Pope) and his heroic turn as a champion football player (disclaimer: for the purposes of this review, I will be referring to the sport as "soccer", simply because that is the term used in the short itself). Sport Goofy in Soccermania debuted on NBC on May 27th 1987, where it was partnered with a clip show pooling from various classic sports-themed Goofy shorts. Now largely forgotten, the short feels like the remnants of a botched attempt to take the company's catalogue of classic characters in a new direction (and that is, more-or-less, exactly what it is) and yet it did, by some tremendous fluke, manage to point to where the company would shortly be headed.

Sport Goofy can be seen as the missing link between the old school theatrical Disney shorts (which were all but extinct by the 1960s, but in which there had been a recent - if ultimately rather fruitless - revival in interest following the success of Mickey's Christmas Carol in 1983) and Disney's embracing of television animation (a domain formerly dominated by the fiendishly frugal Hanna Barbera) in the latter half of the 1980s, while paradoxically bearing no genuine resemblance to either. Superficially, it can be viewed as a loose pilot to the hit series DuckTales, which debuted a few months later, and with which it shares quite a few areas of overlap - most notably, it was the debut performance of the late Russi Taylor as the voices of Donald Duck's nephews Huey, Dewey and Louie (who, incidentally, are not colour-coded and therefore totally indistinguishable in this special). As with DuckTales, Donald himself is curiously sidelined (he's represented only indirectly, as a portrait in Huey, Dewey and Louie's house), but many other characters from the Carl Barks canon make cameos, including Gyro Gearloose and Gladstone Gander, the special takes place in the city of Duckburg, where Scrooge gets to dip in his iconic money bin, and Scrooge's canine nemeses, the Beagle Boys, are featured as our antagonists. There's also a proto Duckworth, whom Scrooge addresses as "Jeeves". Tonally, though, Sport Goofy is a very different beast to DuckTales - the humor is a lot more zany and physical, although not in a manner that recalls the classic Disney shorts either. It certainly feels worlds apart from the reverence and sincerity of the heavily nostalgic Mickey's Christmas Carol.

It's my understanding (and I do have to credit this Roger Rabbit fansite as my primary source on the matter) that Sport Goofy was conceived in 1983, off the back of the enthusiastic reaction to Mickey's Christmas Carol, with the intention of having the short ready to screen by mid-1984 to coincide with the Summer Olympics (and of plugging a fashionable line of Goofy-themed sportswear on the side). However, delays on the project meant that that particular deadline was missed, with the short ultimately becoming a causality of the company takeover by Michael Eisner, Jeffrey Katzenberg and Frank Wells later that same year; they objected to the existing version of the project, which under the guidance of director Darrell Van Citters had been taking things in a far quirkier direction than they wanted associated with the Disney brand. Van Citters was ultimately replaced by Matthew O'Callaghan (Van Citters, who goes uncredited in the final Sport Goofy, left Disney shortly after to work for Warner Bros. Animation) and the project underwent an extensive retooling, before finally seeing the light of day as a television special in 1987. It made little splash in its native US, although VHS releases of the short would prove a hit in various European markets (perhaps owing to the greater popularity of the sport therein).

Sport Goofy might not have re-started the titular character's career in any significant way (although if it's any consolation, Goof Troop was only five years away), and in the end it probably played more successfully as a light appetite-whetter for the upcoming DuckTales - chiefly for the fact that Scrooge McDuck, and not Goofy himself, is the character who really dominates the narrative, along with Huey, Dewey and Louie. At the same time, this Scrooge feels very different to the one set to head Disney's breakthrough animated adventure series, not least because the voices don't align. This is a rare appearance, post-Mickey's Christmas Carol, in which Scrooge's vocals are not supplied by Alan Young, who served as the character's go-to voice until his death in 2016. Instead, he's voiced by Will Ryan, a voice actor with a fairly ubiquitous presence in 1980s animation (both television and theatrical). One would assume that Young wasn't available for this particular project, but I suppose at this point his status as the "definitive" Scrooge McDuck had yet to be truly cemented, so there was still sufficient wriggle room for someone else to have a crack at him. (Note: more recently, Scrooge has been voiced by the authentically Scottish David Tennant, in the 2017 DuckTales reboot, although whether he'll pursue the gig in the long-term, as Young did, remains to be seen.) If, like me, you were raised on a diet of annual viewings of Mickey's Christmas Carol and endless re-runs of the original DuckTales, then Ryan's lighter, less gruff take on the character will take some getting used to - but then, I am also conscious of the fact, to that those raised on the original DuckTales, Taylor's voice will inevitably sound like the definitive Huey, Dewey and Louie, but I can only imagine how radical a departure her voice must have felt to fans at the time (prior to Sport Goofy, Huey, Dewey and Louie were voiced by Clarence Nash, the original voice of Donald Duck, with the result that they had always traditionally sounded like younger versions of Donald). And besides, it works in further distinguishing this version as an alternative interpretation of the character - a wackier, more manic Scrooge than the intrepid adventurer from DuckTales, one who spends the overwhelming majority of the special on the verge of a mental breakdown, for which Ryan's portrayal is a pretty decent fit. I don't regret that the company persisted with Young for future projects (for one, Ryan's accent has a tendency to wander more than Young's), but it is intriguing nevertheless getting to glimpse the competition.

The plot of the special involves the young triplets wanting their miserly uncle to support the city's efforts to hold a soccer tournament by providing a trophy, and feeling understandably cheated when he declines to fork out $1.49 for a brand new trophy and instead fobs them off with a dented old cup he has lying around his money bin. Scrooge's stinginess quickly backfires, however - a museum curator spots the trophy and identifies it as an ancient athletic urn worth millions. Naturally, Scrooge is mortified that he ever parted with it. Huey, Dewey and Louie refuse to give the trophy back to Scrooge, even in exchange for a much grander-looking cup, but agree to let him have it if their team, the Greenbacks, is able to win it fairly in the tournament. Now Scrooge has the incentive to throw his full weight into supporting their team, and is horrified to discover that it consists largely of (strangely familiar) rejects who couldn't make the more prestigious squads. Salvation arises from an unlikely source - Scrooge discovers that Goofy, his old friend (and deceased business partner in another, more Dickensian reality), is a remarkably proficient soccer player, and recruits him as captain of the team. With Goofy's guidance, this ragtag group of underdogs is able to pull together into a formidable force and advance to the tournament finals - where they find unwelcome competition in the form of the Beagle Boys, who also fancy their chances at winning the coveted trophy, and don't share Goofy's philosophies on the importance of sportsmanship. Realising that even their aggressively foul play might be no match for Goofy's talents, the Beagles decide to up their nefarious game by kidnapping Goofy on the night before the final, leaving the Greenbacks without their star player. Can they soldier on to victory regardless, or do the Beagles have them truly licked? As Sport Goofy would say, may the better team win.

The first thing that most seasoned Disney fans tend to pounce on regarding this special is how out of character the entire enterprise seems for Goofy, who is here portrayed as a totally competent sportsman. If you're familiar with the old "How To..." shorts that had Goofy trying out a variety of athletic challenges, he rarely succeeded without unleashing a heck of a lot more calamity along the way. In fairness, though, this Goofy is consistently identified throughout as "Sport Goofy" (Scrooge is the only character who seems to insist on plain old "Goofy"), so one might assume that he's also intended to be an alternate interpretation of the character. And titular hero though he may be, he's essentially just our would-be marketing hook, his raison d'être being to look upstanding and saleable to the athletically-inclined, and to spell out the moral of the short to any viewer obtuse enough to not figure it out on their own ("If you play fair and work together as a team, anyone can be number one!"). The real emotive conflict of the story lies in the relationship between Scrooge and his nephews, and in Huey, Dewey and Louie's disillusionment in Scrooge's transparently self-serving priorities. As a narrative thread, this goes a little under baked - it does lead into the sole moment of sincere character reflection, when Scrooge realises that he cares more about securing the trophy than he does his kidnapped friend, but all that comes of it is a narrative afterthought, with Scrooge eventually mustering humility in donating the trophy to the Duckburg Museum. It strikes me that Scrooge's redemption would have carried more weight had he been somehow instrumental in Goofy's escape (instead of just leaving him to elude the Beagles single-handedly while he argues with the referee) or been willing to put himself on the line by attempting to personally fill in for Goofy (which the special even teases us into thinking might happen - Scrooge does walk out onto the pitch with the others, but alas, takes no active role in the game).

Its interest in the Duck clan aside, Sport Goofy ultimately registers less as a pseudo-pilot to DuckTales than it does a pseudo-crossover between a slightly warped, parallel version of Duckburg, and Disney's 1971 live action-animation hybrid, Bedknobs and Broomsticks, of all things. There does appear to be a fairly salient homage to the aforementioned feature running all throughout Sport Goofy, in recognition of the fact that soccer plays a prominent role in both narratives. In lieu of doing the obvious thing, and giving Goofy a full team assembled from classic Disney characters, the Greenbacks are made up largely of nondescript animals - a motley bunch comprised of elephant, hippopotamus, goat, kangaroo, ostrich, cheetah and sea lion, all but two of which align with the line-up of the True Blues, the "good" team in the Naboombu soccer match (well, the lesser of two evils, anyway). The character designs diverge just enough for me to question if they are actually meant to be the same characters (although if so, then there is a pretty hilarious in-joke, when Goofy asks the Greenbacks if they've ever played soccer before, and is met with a wall of blank stares), but I doubt that the selection of species here was a coincidence. Furthermore, the referee, an avian by the name of Four-Eyes Fowler, has a character design that borrows liberally from that of the Secretary Bird of Bedknobs and Broomsticks. The Bedknobs allusions, while they can't help but feel somewhat out of place in the world of Duckburg, are at the very least cute, although they will have the added drawback of making the Beagle Boys' underhanded tactics look comparatively tame to viewers familiar with their origins (because those Naboombuian animals really know how to play soccer dirty). And, just to add to the grab bag nature of this particular universe, do you know who else makes a cameo? Okay, so I did leave a tiny clue in linking to a fansite for said character in an earlier paragraph - sharp-eyed viewers might spot a proto Roger Rabbit among the spectators at the final game. Sport Goofy might even be most aptly described as an all-star intersection of various Disney projects, past and future, while feeling curiously divorced and adrift from the lot of them.

The obvious question that looms over Sport Goofy is, if this is supposedly the reined in version of the short Van Citters was preparing, how much more off-the-wall was his original vision? Sport Goofy is far from the most anarchic thing I've ever seen (the wildest gag, honestly, involves Goofy escaping from the Beagle Boys with the help of a giant toothbrush pilfered from an advertising billboard), but it does have an off-kilter flavour that certainly seems to be reaching for a more ironic, self-aware level of humor than had been typically associated with the self-reverent Disney up until now (in that regard, I would even be bold enough to call this the primitive ancestor to The Emperor's New Groove - very primitive, mind you). It doesn't truly embrace that aspiration (the resulting special feels vaguely peculiar, but overall fairly fluffy), but you can intermittently see the glint in its eye. The Beagle Boys get the best gags, which might have to do with the fact that a lot of their dialogue in particular plays like it's in constant quotation marks, with the Beagles touting each line as if they're entirely aware that they're going through the motions of diabolical yet flagrantly ridiculous scheme (there's also a strange, understated sight gag revealing that they have a collection of manicules hung decoratively in their living room, which I suppose is intended to tie in with their general criminality but instead raises uncomfortable questions about what they like to get up to in their free time, besides watching anodyne cooking shows). I'm going to hazard a guess that Van Citters' version would have pushed this factor even harder, which makes me regret that his efforts are most certainly fated to stay locked up in the dreaded Disney vault for all eternity (along with the nastier cut of The Black Cauldron).

Something else that has to be said about Sport Goofy is that is quite handsomely animated, at least by the standards of the time, when children's television animation was an absolute wasteland where budgets were concerned (a trend that DuckTales likewise was about to buck). Theatrical quality this ain't, but the characters move with a fluidity and an expressiveness that must have seemed refreshing coming off the backs of so much Hanna Barbera and DiC produce.

Overall, I'm inclined to rate Sport Goofy as a likeable dead end. It failed to captialise on the momentum that inspired it and aired when its intended moment had long passed, its snarky (albeit compromised) tone feels jarringly out of step with the spate of Disney Television Animation shows on the horizon, while at the same time it doesn't pursue that snark to the dizzying degrees that might have made it truly joyful in its outlier-ness. The future of Disney Animation this was not, although the success of DuckTales soon after it does sort of inadvertently make Sport Goofy look as if it knew what it was doing all along. The short both depicts and feels like the product of some parallel Disney universe in which the stars were a little differently aligned, and as a hazy window into that deserted route for Goofy and chums, it offers its own modest but charmingly curious pleasures.