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Director: Chuck Jones
Release Date: September 19, 1942
Rating: ★★★★★ ♕
Review:
The Dover Boys’ or, as it is actually called, ‘The Dover Boys at Pimento University or The Rivals of Roquefort Hall’, is director Chuck Jones’s first masterpiece.
It introduces his trademark of extreme poses, which in this cartoon are combined with ‘smear animation’, devised by Bob Clampett, to unique results.
The extreme posing leads to highly stylized animation, which in itself is hilarious in its unnatural depiction of movement. In ‘The Dover Boys’ we watch both movement through poses, especially in the animation on Dan Backslide, as well as non-movement, with Dora descending the stairs as a prime example. Both techniques are important steps away from the classic squash-and-stretch animation, and from ‘believability through full animation’. Indeed, the animation style of ‘The Dover Boys’ looks forward all the way to the fifties, the era in which stylization of design and animation would flourish and dominate the animation industry. Indeed, the short’s prime animator, Bobe Cannon, would play an important role at UPA, the most influential animation film studio of the fifties.
The subject of ‘The Dover Boys’ is a sophisticated parody on melodrama, consisting of an archetypical story of a villain (called Dan Backslide) kidnapping a damsel in distress (dear Dora), taking her to his cottage in the mountains, where she is rescued by the heroes, in this case, the three Dover Boys, Tom, Dick and Larry.
Or is she? In the final scene they knock each other out, and Dora runs off into a distance with an odd bearded character in a bathing suit, who, as a running gag, hops along rather randomly throughout the picture on the music of ‘The good old Summertime’. This character is a relative of the equally mysterious Minah Bird from Chuck Jones’ earlier cartoon ‘Inki and the Lion’ (1941).
‘The Dover Boys’ is both innovative and funny. Its humor is as sophisticated as it is silly. In any case, the gags come fast and plenty, with hilarious nonsense as a result. An all time classic.
Watch ‘The Dover Boys’ yourself and tell me what you think:
Director: Dave Fleischer
Release Date: January 5, 1934
Stars: Betty Boop, Fearless Freddie
Rating: ★★★★½
Review:
Betty is the star in a melodrama with an evil landlord and a classic hero.
Arguably the first Betty Boop cartoon with a clear plot, ‘She Wronged Him Right’ marks the debut of Fearless Freddie, who seems to be designed as Betty’s new suitor (Bimbo, being an animal, was no longer accepted in a Hollywood dominated by the puritan Hays Code). His stay would be short, however, because very soon Betty would lose interest in men altogether, taking the Code even further.
Only nine months later the formula of this cartoon was repeated with less successful results in ‘Betty Boop’s Prize Show’. ‘She Wronged Him Right’ still contains some wonderful metamorphosis gags and some inanimate objects speaking or suddenly growing hands, preserving some of Fleischer’s famous surrealism.
The very idea of Betty performing in a melodrama may have been borrowed from Disney, who had released the comparable ‘Mickey’s Mellerdrammer’ in 1933.
Watch ‘She Wronged Him Right’ yourself and tell me what you think:
Director: Walt Disney
Release Date: August 7, 1928
Stars: Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Peg Leg Pete
Rating: ★★★★★ ♕
Review:
‘Gallopin’ Gaucho’ is Mickey’s second and last silent cartoon.
If possible, he is even ruder in this short than in his first cartoon, ‘Plane Crazy‘: according to a poster in the background, he is a sought-after criminal, and before our eyes he smokes and drinks, and he dances a stout tango with Minnie (who’s wearing a bra in this cartoon).
Nevertheless, this cartoon is also the first in which Mickey shows to be a small, but clever and courageous hero. For when Minnie is abducted by Peg Leg Pete (who, in his first appearance, still has both his legs), Mickey rescues her in a heroic fight. He then earns the kiss he tried to get by force in ‘Plane Crazy’.
Due to the melodrama ‘Gallopin’ Gaucho’ contains less gags than ‘Plane Crazy’, but it’s still a wonderful and fast cartoon with ingenious gags like the scene in which Mickey uses his own tail as a tackle. ‘Gallopin’ Gaucho’ also set out a storyline that was to be copied a couple of times (e.g. ‘The Cactus Kid‘ (1930), ‘Mickey in Arabia‘ (1932),’ The Klondike Kid’ (1932)), and self-consciously parodied in ‘Gallopin’ Romance’, the film shown in ‘Mickey’s Gala Premiere’ (1933).
A few final trivial remarks:
- Mickey has shoes in this cartoon, which he shortly looses while whistling his ostrich in one scene.
- Mickey’s eyes change from the goggly to the familiar ones during the same scene.
- The bird Mickey’s riding might very well be a Rhea, a relative of the ostrich, that lives on the pampas of Argentina, the place where the cartoon takes place.
Watch ‘Gallopin’ Gaucho’ yourself and tell me what you think:
This is Mickey Mouse cartoon No. 2
To the previous Mickey Mouse cartoon: Plane Crazy
To the next Mickey Mouse cartoon: Steamboat Willie
