Soda Squirt

[this is my 1000th post]

Director: ?
Release Date: August 12, 1933
Stars: Flip the Frog
Rating: ★★★
Review:

By 1933 the Flip the Frog cartoons had become as good as they would ever be, with clear stories and many gags.

However, MGM was not impressed, and the series was discontinued, making way for Iwerks’s new star, more fit to the goody-goody-era of 1934-1937, Willie Whopper.

‘Soda Squirt’ was Flip’s very last cartoon, and it looks like Iwerks answer to Disney’s ‘Mickey’s Gala Premier‘ from one month earlier. But where Mickey was the star of a gala evening, Flip is only a soda joint owner. Nevertheless, on the grand opening of his new eatery, many Hollywood stars drop by, including Laurel and Hardy, Jimmy Durante, Buster Keaton, Lionel Barrymore (as Rasputin from ‘Rasputin and the Empress’, 1932), the Marx Brothers, Mae West, and Joe E. Brown.

Unfortunately, the voices are terrible, hampering the caricatures. Especially those of the Marx Brothers are way off the mark. Moreover, halfway the cartoon goes haywire when a gay stereotype turns into a monster, wrecking the whole place. It’s a pity that Iwerks couldn’t do anything more interesting with the Hollywood stars, and so ‘Soda Squirt’, despite a few nice ideas and a jazzy score, isn’t quite the classic ‘Mickey’s Gala Premier’ definitely is.

Watch ‘Soda Squirt’ yourself and tell me what you think:

This is the 38th and last Flip the Frog cartoon
To the previous Flip the Frog cartoon: Pale-Face

‘Soda Squirt’ is available on the DVD-set ‘Cartoons that Time Forgot – The Ub Iwerks Collection Vol. 2’