Bimbo’s Express

Director: Dave Fleischer
Release Date: August 22, 1931
Stars: Betty Boop, Bimbo
Rating: ★★
Review:

In this Talkartoon Bimbo is a moving man, moving Betty Boop’s household together with a horse, a cat and a hippo.

The short features ca. no story and consists of a string of unrelated throwaway gags. The animation, too, is at times completely random. For example, there’s some totally unnecessary and incomprehensible flexible animation on Bimbo’s van in the opening scene. This total lack of direction hampers ‘Bimbo’s Express’, and it fails to fulfil any promise.

The cartoon’s most stunning scene is that of Betty Boop cutting her toenails. But even more striking is Sammy Timberg’s music, which is loosely jointed from numerous familiar tunes, and which anticipates Carl Stalling’s techniques by several years.

This cartoon is billed ‘Bimbo & Betty’, indicating Betty’s rising star. In the next cartoon, ‘Minding the Baby‘, it would be ‘Betty Boop and Bimbo’, and in ‘Mask-A-Raid‘, it’s already “Betty Boop in ‘Mask-A-Raid’ with Bimbo’…

Watch ‘Bimbo’s Express’ yourself and tell me what you think:

This is Talkartoon No. 24
To the previous Talkartoon: Bimbo’s Initiation
To the next Talkartoon: Minding the Baby

‘Bimbo’s Express’ is available on the French DVD Box Set ‘Betty Boop Coffret Collector’