Some Cartoons For Saturday Morning #3

Happy Saturday morning again my friends. It is time to look at some more classic cartoons. 

Let's start with a fantastic black and white Daffy Duck cartoon. This cartoon was directed by the one and only Bob Clampett. Clampett directed many of the funniest and wildest Looney Tunes shorts and this film shows him at his best. Fitting with the director's wild and crazy sense of humor, this cartoon features that great early wild and crazy Daffy Duck, who enjoys jumping up and down and shouting "Wooo-Wooo." This cartoon also features a much more sympathetic depiction of Daffy than later cartoons would, and it is extremely effective. Porky Pig has a part as the judge and there was a reason for this. At this time nearly all the Looney Tunes cartoons featured Porky Pig, while the Merrie Melodies did not have to. With this in mind it was common in Looney Tunes of this period for Porky to simply have a small part to meet this quota. So without further ado here is The Henpecked Duck (1941).





Up next comes a very unusual Popeye cartoon. This cartoon is unusual because Popeye does not play the hero but instead is the fall guy. He plays somewhat of an Elmer Fudd to a wisecracking goat's Bugs Bunny. In fact one could easily argue that the goat is the main character of this cartoon. This film certainly at times feels more like a Looney Tunes cartoon than a Popeye. There is even a lot of fourth wall breaking here in the way you would except more from a Tex Avery film than a Popeye. The unusualness should not be held against this cartoon as it is very funny. This is a Famous Studios Popeye. The early Popeye cartoons had been done by Fleischer Studios. However due to disputes (this is a topic, not to go into full now as it would need a whole post of its own), Paramount (the distributors) would fire Max and Dave Fleischer and replace them with there own Famous Studios. The later Famous Studios Popeyes could be rather weak and because of this the Famous Studios Popeyes have a bad reputation among cartoon fans. This is not fair as the early Famous Studios Popeyes are actually excellent cartoons that deserve greater attention. Case in point, The Hungry Goat.



Next up is a cartoon starring the one and only Scrappy. No I am not talking about Scrappy Doo. Rather I am talking about a cartoon series from Columbia staring a little boy who had many strange adventures. These cartoons have what make 1930's cartoons so popular among vintage cartoon fans. They are so full of imaginative and plain old strange gags that you would not find in any other era of cartoons. Having such talented artists as Dick Huemer, Art Davis and Sid Marcus working on this series certainly helped make these highly enjoyable cartoons. Here is one of my favorites from the series, The Flop House (1933).



Speaking of strange 1930's cartoons, here is the best. Before Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), the Fleischer Studio made one of their animated masterpieces a Betty Boop cartoon entitled Snow-White (1933). Completely animated by Roland Crandall and featuring jazz legend Cab Calloway as the voice of Ko-Ko the clown. This is one of the most imaginative, fun and simply strange cartoon shorts of Hollywood's golden age.

   


In the 1980's DePatie-Freleng and Hanna-Barbera teamed up to create a new TV series based off DePatie-Freleng's most popular character The Pink Panther. This was Pink Panther and Sons (1984-1985). Pink Panther's sons were actually the main characters of this series with the famous panther taking the backseat. Here is an episode entitled The Pink Link.




What do you say we end with some Disney. Here is one of my favorite Disney short cartoons, Hockey Homicide (1945). This is one of those fantastic cartoons with a bunch of Goofys playing a sport. This is one of the zaniest and funniest Disney cartoons, directed by one of Disney's funniest directors Jack Kinney. This is cartoon humor at its best. Notice the brilliantly funny reuse of animation from Pinocchio (1940) featuring Monstro the whale.



Stay tooned for more cartoon treasures next Saturday. Until then peace, love and cartoons.

-Michael J. Ruhland






   

Movie Review: Serenity

Movie's Movie Grade: F


Review: What the heck did I just watch? I never thought I would start a review like that but what the heck did I just watch? This movie is a bizarre. confused, unpleasant and unbelievable mess.

There is no better word to describe this movie than unpleasant. This may seem like a good thing for a thriller and it can be when done right. However nothing is done right here. This movie lacks the depth and complexity it so obviously looks for as well as any feeling of real suspense. All that is left after this is unpleasantness. Between the disgusting dialogue from the father in law, the unlikableness of the characters and sex scenes that are more uncomfortable than sexy this movie can get hard to watch. Not helping is that when the film is not unpleasant it is down right boring. Now I like slow paced movies because often the slow pace can enhance our connection with the characters or environment. This is not the case here. The characters are so unlikable and uninteresting that I could not care about them and the environment is downright dull. Often slow paced movies can feel like you are spending time with the characters, but in this case I don't want to spend time with the characters. The movie just drags along like this for most of its length causing no audience connection besides boredom and disgust. This is until the plot twist comes up.

When the plot twist comes up the film is no longer dull (though it is still unpleasant), but now instead of being boringly bad, the film is instead so bad it caused much unintentional laughter on my part. I could not believe what I was hearing or seeing when I got to this part of the movie. I did not see this twist coming at all. However that is not because the twist is good. It is instead because the twist is so bizarre, out of nowhere and terrible that there would have no reason to expect this. I will admit it is daring but daring does not always mean good. This was a risk that honestly would have been better not taken (or at least handled better than it was here). Some of what we saw before actually no longer makes sense or brings even more unpleasant thoughts to my head. This movie treats this plot twist like it is something incredibly thought provoking and clever. However it simply isn't, but instead just feels weird, unpleasant and unintentionally funny. Still I can't help but wish the rest of the movie was like the film became after this plot twist. Sure it is horrible, but it is a special kind of horrible that provides some entertainment value in how bad it is. Unfortunately the majority of the movie is just alternating between dull and unpleasant, and the enjoyably bad part lasts for a short time.

The only reason to watch this movie is to laugh at how crazily bad it gets towards the end. Still if you are one of those who enjoys laughing at crazily bad movies, you still have to sit through the rest of this movie to get there and that can be a really big chore. So I would recommend skipping this anyways.

-Michael J. Ruhland