You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘bowling’ tag.
Directors: William Hanna & Joseph Barbera
Airing date: October 5, 1962
Stars: The Flintstones
Rating: ★★
Review:
In this appallingly unfunny episode Fred secretly takes ballet lessons to restore his bowling skills.
This episode starts with a long morning routine in which Wilma tries to wake up Fred. This part contains two stone age gags: Fred shaving himself with a clam containing a bumble bee, and Wilma frying a humongous dinosaur egg. Later we watch Wilma and Betty trying to swap a giant fly, and Wilma’s gigantic Brontosaur ribs dinner for Fred.
These gags are fair, at best, but much better than the main story, which drags on, despite the deadline of a big game Fred hopes to win and its stakes being high. Why Fred doesn’t tell anyone he is taking ballet lessons in the first place is never explained, and this secrecy is as puzzling as discomforting, given the fact that Fred and Wilma are supposed to have a happy marriage.
Watch an excerpt from ‘Bowling Ballet’ yourself and tell me what you think:
This is The Flintstones Season Three episode 4
To the previous The Flintstones episode: Barney the Invisible
To the next Flintstones episode: The Twitch
‘Bowling Ballet’ is available on the Blu-Ray ‘The Flintstones – The Complete Series’ and the DVD-box ‘The Flintstones Season 3’
Directors: William Hanna & Joseph Barbera
Airing date: September 28, 1962
Stars: The Flintstones
Rating: ★★
Review:
This Flintstones episode starts with Barney having the hiccups, while Fred Flintstone is trying to invent a new soda drink in his garage. When Barney drops by, Fred tries to cure Barney’s hiccups with his potion no. 412, which does the trick and renders Barney invisible.
The rest of the episode fails to cash in on this premise, with all invisibility routines being rather lazy and uninspired. Fred even wins a bowling contest using Barney’s invisibility, without any repercussions.
There are a few prehistoric gear gags, like a mammoth and a seal acting like a washing machine, and birds functioning as clothes pins, but for the most part this is a lackluster affair.
‘Barney the Invisible’ is noteworthy, however, for being the first episode starting and ending with the new title song ‘meet the Flintstones’, which is a great improvement on the earlier intro. The accompanying images, too, are much more fun, luckily dumping the rather questionable images of Fred eating dinner for the television without Wilma, which accompanied the original intro.
Watch ‘Barney the Invisible’ yourself and tell me what you think:
https://www.topcartoons.tv/cartoons/barney-the-invisible
This is The Flintstones Season Three episode 3
To the previous The Flintstones episode: Fred’s New Boss
To the next Flintstones episode: Bowling Ballet
‘Barney the Invisible’ is available on the Blu-Ray ‘The Flintstones – The Complete Series’ and the DVD-box ‘The Flintstones Season 3’
Directors: William Hanna & Joseph Barbera
Airing Date: September 30, 1960
Stars: The Flintstones
Rating: ★★★½
Review:
‘The Flintstone Flyer’ was the very first Flintstone episode aired on television. The story was one of two already conceived before the series went to production and used to sell the series (the other one was ‘The Swimming Pool‘).
The episode establishes many aspects of the series: the setting may be in the stone age, this is a rather poor excuse for a suburban situation comedy depicting very a very standard family from mid-20th century indeed, complete with modern inventions like cars, telephone and television (how the latter two work is never revealed). This is little wonder, as the series was modeled after ‘The Honeymooners’ (aired 1955-1956), which features remarkably similar characters (for example, they love bowling, too).
Hanna and Barbera’s stone age is one of pure fantasy, and features dinosaurs coexisting with humans, despite the fact that dinosaurs had died out 65 million years before the dawn of man. In that respect ‘The Flintstones’ stand in a long tradition: dinosaurs co-existing with man could be seen in e.g. Willis O’Brien’s short ‘R.F.D. 10,000 B.C.’ (1916), in the Alley Oop comics (starting in 1932), in ‘Daffy Duck and the Dinosaur‘ (1939), in ‘Prehistoric Porky’ (1940), and Fleischer’s Stone Age cartoons from 1940.
The Flinstones tells about Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble. The two are neighbors in some suburban area of ‘Bedrock’ (population 2500). They both love bowling, and are willing to lie to their wives (Wilma and Betty, respectively) to go out to play their favorite game. When bowling, Fred has a particular walk on his toes, and when excited he shouts ‘Yabba-dabba doo!’.
In this particular episode, the guys want to go bowling, while they have to go to the opera with their wives. So, Fred pretends to be ill and then the two literally fly off to the bowling alley, using a flying machine Barney has invented before. The opera itself is a typical mismatch of Wagnerian costume and bel canto singing, a trope frequently encountered in cartoons.
The complete cartoon moves at a steady pace, and by 2018 one can only conclude that the humor is rather dated. One cannot resist the thought what poor marriages these must be that one cannot be honest to each other. This sets the tone of many episodes to come: by now they only seem to demonstrate the inequality between men and women at the time.
Moreover, little to nothing is done with the stone age concept: we watch monkeys grabbing the pins, and a soda machine that’s operated by a man, but that’s about it.
No, despite Warner Bros. veterans Warren Foster and Michael Maltese working on the stories, the classic status of this very first animated series to be aired on prime time must come from its appealing designs by Ed Benedict (who had designed cavemen before, for Tex Avery’s ‘The First Bad Man’ from 1955), clever layouts by Dick Bickenbach and Walt Clinton, and great background artwork (e.g. featuring olive skies) by Art Lozzi, Fernando Montealegre, Robert Gentle and Dick Thomas. Even the limited animation (by the likes of top-animators Ken Muse, Carlo Vinci, Ed Love, Don Patterson and Dick Lundy) remains quite interesting throughout, even if the designs are rather off at times.
Watch an excerpt from ‘The Flintstone Flyer’ yourself and tell me what you think:
This is the first Flintstones Episode. To the demo episode: The Flagstones
To the next Flintstones episode: Hot Lips Hannigan
‘The Flintstone Flyer’ is available on the DVD-set ‘The Flintstones: The Complete First Season’
Directors: William Hanna & Joseph Barbera
Release Date: July 18, 1942
Stars: Tom & Jerry
Rating: ★★★★★
Review:
‘The Bowling Alley Cat’ is the first Tom and Jerry cartoon to take please outside their familiar home setting. In this short the cat and the mouse play at an abandoned bowling alley.
The short is mildly paced, but its timing is excellent and the silent comedy delightful, supported by Scott Bradley’s excellent score.
The film contains an early example of metamorphosis, in which Tom changes into a familiar household object, this time a ninepin. This type of metamorphosis would become a recurrent gag in the Tom & Jerry series. Compared to later entries Tom’s deformation in ‘The Bowling Alley Cat’ is mild, and still a little plausible. This kind of plausibility was abandoned the next year in the more frantic cartoon ‘Sufferin’ Cats‘.
Watch ‘The Bowling Alley Cat’ yourself and tell me what you think:
This is Tom & Jerry cartoon No. 7
To the previous Tom & Jerry cartoon: Puss ‘n Toots
To the next Tom & Jerry cartoon: Fine Feathered Friend
Dr. Grob's Animation Review 