Classic Cartoon Critic: Mickey’s Polo Team

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Rating:  ★★

This is one of those celebrity showcase episodes that I generally dislike, that I actually enjoyed more than I expected. Most of the celebrity scenes do fall flat, though, no longer meaning much of anything unless you’re a fan of old movies like I’m a fan of old cartoons. And the fat jokes with Oliver Hardy are really laid on thick, taking the cartoon down a whole star.

Mickey and Goofy also pretty much just cameos in this one, and are given nothing to really do – Clarabelle, in a fun little flirting scene, actually is given more than them. But we do get some enjoyable stuff with the Big Bad Wolf, from Disney’s Three Little Pigs cartoons, and we get some really great stuff with Donald. It’s no wonder the duck rises to become Disney’s biggest star in the 40s – it’s an absolute joy to watch him. His scenes in the last third or so of the cartoon are the reason I rate this cartoon as high as I do.

Overall, an interesting piece of history with some really obnoxious fat-people jokes but some really fun Donald Duck moments.

 

((I also post these reviews to tumblr!))

Classic Cartoon Critic: Boom Boom

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Rating:  ★★★

Another Jack King cartoon starring Beans, but this time Porky’s along for the ride too, in King’s first use of the character. Though the characterization of both of them falls pretty flat, overall it’s my favorite Jack King Beans cartoon so far.

There’s some genuinely amusing and inventive gags, a fairly focused WWI-era war plot, and some decent animation. It takes almost three minutes for a recognizable character (Porky) to show up, but those first few minutes are fairly enjoyable anyway.

There’s some light fat shaming of Porky in the middle of the cartoon, and possible ableism in the first part (I’m not totally sure what’s going on with the guy hitting himself in the face with a toy gun). It’s not a great cartoon, but it’s certainly not an awful one.

 

((I also post these reviews to tumblr!))

Classic Cartoon Critic: On Ice

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Rating:  ★★★★

This is a fun one. It’s one of two classic cartoons featuring Mickey, Minnie, Pluto, Goofy and Donald all together in the same cartoon (not counting a cameo at the end of a Chip and Dale cartoon). It’s also the only classic cartoon to have those five characters and Clarabelle and Horace in it (though these two just cameo at the beginning).

Despite some pacing issues (Pluto’s segment in particular drags on a bit long with no interruption), it’s a delightful cartoon that gives each main cast member some time to shine (even Minnie, a little). And it ends with Mickey getting to save the day without damseling Minnie, which is nice (it’s Donald who must be rescued).

Final note: Goofy feeds chewing tobacco to fish and then they spit it into a spittoon, and it’s really… gross.

 

((I also post these reviews to tumblr!))

Classic Cartoon Critic: The Phantom Ship

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Rating: ★ ★

An unpromising combination of Jack King, Beans the Cat, and Ham and Ex winds up leading to the most entertaining Beans-without-Porky short yet. Though, unfortunately, as you may have noticed, that’s not saying a lot.

This time around Beans is going on a search for treasure, and Ham and Ex sneak along for the ride. They wind up in Iceland (which is… icy), at a haunted pirate ship. There’s some mildly fun skeleton shenanigans, and an enjoyable enough final chase after some pirates get de-thawed. Nothing super exciting, but overall a more solid cartoon than I’ve come to expect from the director/character combo.

 

((I also post these reviews to tumblr!))

Classic Cartoon Critic: Pluto’s Judgement Day

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Rating: ★ ★ ★

This is an interesting one. The cartoon starts with Pluto chasing after a cat and disrupting Mickey in the process. After being told off by the Mouse, Pluto goes to sleep and has a dream where he’s put on trial by cats for his crimes against them (which apparently involve chasing two of them to their deaths and giving another mental health issues).

It’s a surreal cartoon, to tell the truth. A very interesting short to watch, but not exactly the most enjoyable. It certainly doesn’t inspire a desire for repeated viewings.

A few final notes: there’s some nice dog-emotion animation in the first part before the dream, and there’s a racist Uncle Tom bit during the trial, which drastically lessens the appeal of the cartoon.

 

((I also post these reviews to tumblr!))

Classic Cartoon Critic: The Fire Alarm

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Rating: ★

Another Jack King Beans the Cat cartoon. This one’s mostly a vehicle for the characters Ham and Ex, who are just as uninteresting as they were in their debut in I Haven’t Got a Hat. They spend the day with “Uncle Beans” at the fire station he apparently works at, and cause all manner of boring mischief. Beans is also, as you might guess, as flat as ever.  The short ends with our ‘hero’ Beans gleefully spanking children. There’s really just… nothing to recommend about this cartoon.

 

((I also post these reviews to tumblr!))

Classic Cartoon Critic: Mickey’s Fire Brigade

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Rating:  ★★★★

Another delightful ‘Mickey, Donald and Goofy doing a job’ cartoon. As would be assumed from the title, this time our trio are firefighters, trying to put out the flames engulfing a burning apartment building.

There’s some really inventive uses of perspective and the fire they’re fighting against, and a cute “Three Little Pigs” music cue at one point. Clarabelle Cow also makes an appearance – naked, at that.

A bit more action-packed and experimental than “Mickey’s Service Station”, this is a great short that’s getting us closer and closer to the perfection of 1937′s run of Mickey, Donald and Goofy cartoons.

 

((I also post these reviews on tumblr!))

Classic Cartoon Critic: Gold Diggers of ’49

 

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Rating: ★★★

This cartoon is kind of big deal. It marks the return of Porky Pig, the Warner Bros directing debut of none other than “Fred” [Tex] Avery, and is animated by legends Bob Clampett and “Charles” [Chuck] Jones. It marks a bit of a turning point for WB cartoons, which had honestly almost always been mediocre before now, into something more sharply written and gag-heavy. The animation is really fluid and and enjoyable to watch, and the plot, about discovering gold and dealing with a robber, moves at a great pace and is entertainingly told.

That said, despite all this praise, there are some pretty heavy stumbling blocks in here. First and foremost, since it damages the whole cartoon, is the fact that it stars and focuses on Beans, who is still a very flat and uninteresting character. There’s also some unfortunate but predictable fat-shaming jokes at Porky’s expense and a boring and sexist ‘woman as prize’ cliche. But most damning, and something that is unfortunately not a great surprise given the director, is some really heinous racism. There’s a pair of gross Chinese caricatures that feature prominently in the first half, and just when I didn’t think it could get worse the characters are covered in dust and become a blackface joke.

So, yeah, important, historic even, cartoon, but with a real ugly side to it that unfortunately prevents it from being a cartoon that I’d consider ‘good’.

 

((I also post these reviews on tumblr!))

Classic Cartoon Critic: Mickey’s Garden

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Rating: ★★★★

This is one of the Mickey Mouse cartoons I used to watch a bunch as a kid, replaying it over and over again on a VHS tape. It’s a bright and colorful cartoon about Mickey trying to rid his garden of bugs. But when Pluto accidentally runs into him, spraying him in the face with bug poison, he starts hallucinating that the bugs want their revenge.

There’s a lot of really imaginative (and frankly, sometimes horrifying) uses of the bugs, whether they’re eating fruits and veggies, walking around drunk on poison (I don’t know how that works either), or trying to kill Mickey and Pluto. There’s some great musical direction and sound design in this one too, to really sell some of the scenes.

And Mickey, you should know better than to stare down the nozzle of anything, especially a spray can of poison.

 

((I also post these reviews on tumblr!))

Classic Cartoon Critic: Hollywood Capers

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Rating:  ★★

Another WB cartoon starring Beans, and another disappointment. This cartoon starts out seeming like it’s going to be another of those annoying celebrity-focused cartoons of the era (a cartoon type that ages very poorly once those celebrities are no longer relevant), but by the end has morphed into Beans fighting a robot Frankenstein for some reason. It also spends around a third of its runtime on that robot doing sight-gags. What I’m saying is that the plot is really all over the place.

Oliver Owl reappears, from I Haven’t Got a Hat, as does Little Kitty, but once an angry Oliver throws Beans away, the owl disappears, and Kitty only appears one more time after that, to look scared and run away from the robot. Beans also still has practically no personality. Just not a great cartoon.

 

((I also post these reviews on tumblr!))