Director: Dick Huemer?
Release Date: July 14, 1918
Stars: Mutt and Jeff
Rating: ★★★½
Review:
In this Dick Huemer-animated short Mutt and Jeff appear to own a lunchroom. Mutt is the waiter, and Jeff the cook.
There are essentially three gags: a bearded customer wants some ox-tail soup, another costumer some pie, and the third, a beautiful woman, the best flapjacks they have. When she notes that the flapjacks don’t look so good, Mutt places one on the grammophone player and promptly starts to dance with her to the music. The dance ends when a policeman shows up, knocking out both Mutt and Jeff, but taking the dance with the beautiful dame himself.
While seating the lady looks like from another picture, when compared to the cartoony design of Jeff, but this feeling vanishes during the dance scene, and one must admit Dick Huemer does quite a good job in animating this particular scene. Another fine piece of early character animation are Mutt’s deft hand movements while handling the second customer.
Watch ‘The Extra-Quick Lunch’ (Flapjacks) yourself and tell me what you think:
‘The Extra-Quick Lunch’ (Flapjacks) is available on the DVD ‘Mutt and Jeff – The Original Animated Odd Couple’
Dr. Grob's Animation Review 
5 comments
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February 23, 2022 at 22:28
Marc Lopin
Dick Huemer cannot be the director of the cartoon since it is the animators Charles Bowers and Raoul Barré who run the studio at that time.
February 24, 2022 at 08:59
Gijs Grob
Thanks for reaching out! Can you clarify yourself? Because now you sound like “Dave Hand couldn’t be the director because Walt Disney run the studio”, and I’m certain you don’t mean it like that. Moreover, in the 1910s animators often were synonymous with directors. So what’s your argument?
February 24, 2022 at 22:25
Marc Lopin
According to Klein and Huemer’s memoirs, each artist completely animated a particular scene. So I don’t see how Huemer could have been credited as a director when he only animated a few scenes in the film.
March 1, 2022 at 10:41
Gijs Grob
I understand, but if Huemer was the sole animator on this film, he probably was the de facto director, as the function of animation director as we see it nowadays only emerged at the end of the 1920s.
April 1, 2022 at 00:16
Marc Lopin
Ah, I didn’t know that, thanks for the info.