Released just one year after As Dreamers Do, Walt Before Mickey covers much the same territory, albeit with professional actors and a slightly bigger budget. Yet to say this biopic benefits from such advantages would be  an overstatement, for the resulting film remains very much an amateurish production.

Monotone narration accompanied by a seemingly endless soundtrack spell out Walt’s early career from supplying cartoons to a local theatre through to his success with the Laugh-O-Grams and Alice Comedies. Helping Walt along the way were friend Ub Iwerks and brother Roy Disney, whose diverse talents allow Walt to focus on running the fledgling business. Not so rewarding for the biopic is its focus on the business side of Walt’s early career.

The depiction of these pioneering days of animation is devoid of any sense of wonder, with most scenes involving artists sitting at their desks while Walt barks orders. Instead of a sense of camaraderie that surely must have existed, we are treated to squabbling over bounced cheques, evictions and Walt rummaging through bins to find his next meal. 

The only fleeting glimpse of the workings of animation is when Walt demonstrates a bat hitting a ball to budding animator Rudy Ising. As he flicks through the pages of the company’s ledger, the drawings seem to come to life until Walt reaches the last page detailing the precarious state of the company’s finances. Despite their low-budgets, it is likewise doubtful that either Walt biopic saw much of return on either investment.