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Director: Lee Mishkin
Release date: November 8, 1974
Rating: ★★★★½
Review:
This short video clip is an all favorite of mine, perfectly illustrating Roger Glover’s rather hippie-like hit song from his concept album for children ‘The Butterfly Ball and the Grasshopper’s Feast’, which in turn is based on a poem with the same title.
Both the original poem, the record were designed by Alan Aldridge, and so is Halas & Batchelor’s animation film, with charming results. Harold Whitaker has turned these images into charming animation very well, and Lee Mishkin does a good job transferring the lyrics to faithful, if often surprising images.
Young Ronnie James Dio’s voice is given to a minstrel frog, who walks to the Butterfly Ball itself, together with a number of a masked animals. Three drunken salamanders provide some comic relief, as does a fat toad at the ball itself. The slightly surreal images are a delight throughout and the clip is over before you know it. I wish the whole record was transferred into animation this way.
Watch ‘Butterfly Ball (Love Is All)’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Butterfly Ball (Love Is All)’ is available on the Blu-Ray ‘The Halas & Batchelor Short Film Collection’
Director: Chuck Jones
Release Date: December 31, 1955
Rating: ★★★★★ ♕
Review:
‘One Froggy Evening’ tells about a construction worker, who discovers a singing frog inside a cornerstone of a building.
He dreams of earning loads of money with the frog, but unfortunately the frog sings for him only, not for anybody else. This leads to the man’s ruin, and in the end he disposes the frog into another building. But in 2056 AD the same thing is about to happen all over again…
‘One Froggy Evening’ is one of the most perfect cartoons ever made (one competitor that comes to mind is ‘The Band Concert’ from 1935): its story, penned by Michael Maltese, is told with the most economical means, without any dialogue. The silent acting is superb, the timing excellent and the handling of the facial expressions gorgeous. The transition of the frog (baptized Michigan J. Frog in the seventies) from lively entertainer to ordinary amphibian is completely convincing, and a great example of the power of animation.
Although the frog was supposedly locked inside the building in 1892, most of the songs it sings are from a later date: ‘Hello! Ma Baby’ was published in 1899, ‘Won’t You Come Over to My House in 1906, ‘I’m Just Wild About Harry’ in 1921, and ‘Please Don’t Talk About Me When I’m Gone’ is even from 1930. Only ‘Come Back to Erin’ and ‘Throw Him Down McCloskey’ are apt, being from 1868 and 1890, respectively. The catchy ‘The Michigan Rag’ was written especially for this cartoon.
‘One Froggy Evening’ feels like a parable. It’s a story of greed, of misfortune, of headstrong belief in a bad idea, and of shattered dreams. It is not hilariously funny, but delightful and simply beautiful. It was Chuck Jones’s personal favorite, and it’s deservedly regarded as an all-time classic. Not that anyone in 1955 thought so, though. The Academy Award went to ‘Speedy Gonzales’, while ‘One Froggy Evening’ didn’t even get an Oscar nomination. Meanwhile, ‘One Froggy Evening’ remains one of the very, very few animated cartoons to inspire a scene in a live action movie, in this case the alien scene in Mel Brooks’s ‘Spaceballs’ (1987).
Watch ‘One Froggy Evening’ yourself and tell me what you think:
Dr. Grob's Animation Review 