The personalities of talking animal sidekicks have already been discussed by others. In this post, I want to examine their silent counterparts. The silent sidekicks are extensions of the main characters. They express all the outrageous emotion their owners, but on a lighter scale.

Rapunzel’s little chameleon (why on earth she has, of all possible creatures, a chameleon, is still a mystery to me) glares and lunges when Rapunzel is in trouble. Abu, through his angry chittering, expresses the selfish impulses that Aladdin has to control in himself. A Bug’s Life is all about sentient insects, but the ant queen has an aphid as a dog-like pet that growls when the queen is angry.

For whatever reason, we keep coming back to Meeko, so I’ll pull him out again. We have the large-scale drama between the English and the Powhatans reduced to squabbles between a raccoon and a pug. The violence between the humans is daunting; the violence between the animals is fun. The audience is led to root for Meeko, the representative of the protagonist.

The silent sidekick is the cartooniest of cartoons, although still the simplest.