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Director: Gary Rydstrom
Release date: June 24, 2011
Rating: ★★★
Review:
‘Hawaiian Vacation’ is the first of three ‘Toy Story Toons’ produced in 2011 and 2012. The short opened for ‘Cars 2‘ and is set in Bonnie’s house after the events of ‘Toy Story 3’.
The film opens on a wintery day with Bonnie’s family going on a vacation to Hawaii. Ken and Barbie have been hiding in her rucksack as stowaways, for Ken has decided he will give Barbie her first kiss on the tropical island. Unfortunately, they’ve been hiding in Bonnie’s school rucksack, which remains at home, but Woody and the other toys have an idea.
‘Hawaiian Vacation’ relies a lot, and maybe too much on the familiar tropes of all the Toy Story characters. The idea of friends helping out a friend distress is charming, but I wonder whether Ken and Barbie were the best choice as the film’s main protagonists. Oh well, it accounts for six minutes of unpretentious fun.
Watch an excerpt from ‘Hawaiian Vacation’ and tell me what you think:
‘Hawaiian Vacation’ is available on the Blu-Ray/DVD of ‘Cars 2’ and on the Blu-Ray/DVD ‘Pixar Short Films Collection Volume 2’
Director: Joel Simon
Release Date: July 5, 2012
Rating: ★★★★
Review:
‘Macropolis’ was commissioned by the ‘Unlimited Programme’, part of the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad, and dedicated to deaf and disabled arts and culture.
The short stars a toy cat, who’s rejected from the factory because he’s only got one eye. He teams up with a little toy dog with only one leg. The cat gives the dog a leg prosthesis, the dog gives the cat an eye patch and together they try to catch the truck which delivers all the other toys to the toy store.
‘Macropolis’ is a gentle little film which succeeds in moving the audience without any dialogue. The stop motion is mixed with pixillation and live action, and filmed partly outdoors. A nice touch is that the film makers don’t hide the fact that stop motion takes a lot of time, and the background is buzzing with movement as the two little animals wander the streets.
Watch ‘Macropolis’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Macropolis’ is available on the Belgian DVD ‘Haas & Hert en andere verhaaltjes’
Director: Seymour Kneitel
Release Date: August 16, 1957
Stars: Herman and Katnip
Rating: ★★
Review:
‘From Mad to Worse’ takes place at a department store, where Katnip is a night guard.
We watch Herman and his cousins playing with a toy train in the toy department. When Katnip tries to catch them, Herman and his fellow mice play tricks on the cat, making him think he has gone mad, much like Hubie and Bertie did to Claude Cat in the Chuck Jones cartoon ‘Mouse Wreckers‘ (1949). Katnip even goes to a psychiaCATrist (got it?).
Compared to Chuck Jones’s cartoon, ‘From Mad to Worse’ is a rather tiresome experience. The short is surprisingly dialogue-rich, hampering the gags, and in this short Herman ‘quotes’ Confucius twice, turning into a stereotyped China-man while doing so. The animation is full, but mediocre. In fact the cartoon’s highlight is the cartoon modern background art, especially the background paintings of the first scenes are very beautiful.
Watch ‘From Mad to Worse’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘From Mad to Worse’ is available on the DVD ‘Herman and Katnip – The Complete Series’
Director: Walter Lantz
Release Date: December 1, 1941
Stars: Woody Woodpecker
Rating: ★★★½
Review:
‘$21 a Day (Once a Month)’ is the first of the Swing Symphonies, a wartime cartoon series of fifteen based on swing music.
‘$21 a Day (Once a Month)’ reflects the war era perfectly, even though it appeared five days before the attack on Pearl Harbor. The cartoon celebrates the draft that had been installed in 1941. The short’s original twist, however, is that the title song (by Felix Bernard and Ray Klages) is sung by toy animals, toy dolls, toy soldiers etc.
The designs are a mixed bag, some harking back to the early 1930s. Some animals are clearly stuffed, while others look like any other cartoon animal. Unfortunately, this first Swing Symphony hardly really swings. Darrel Calker’s arrangement features a lot of close harmony, but no jazz solos. Only after five minutes some boogie-woogie piano kicks in. Woody Woodpecker has a cameo, making some marching toy soldiers walk differently.
‘$21 a Day (Once a Month)’ is a joyful cartoon, but there were much better Swing Symphonies to follow.
Watch ‘$21 a Day (Once a Month)’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘$21 a Day (Once a Month)’ is available on the DVD set ‘The Woody Woodpecker and Friends Classic Cartoon Collection’
Director: George Pal
Release Date: December 26, 1941
Rating: ★★★★
Review:
In ‘Rhythm in the Ranks’ the action already starts during the opening titles, when we watch a package unwrap itself. The package reveals to contain a battalion of toy soldiers, who quickly come to life.
Our hero is ‘Little Jim’, a toy soldier who has to carry a large cannon. When he meets a skating girl in Dutch costume, he forgets the cannon. He gets punished, having to paint the barracks, which he does with invisibility paint, anticipating the Donald Duck short ‘The Vanishing Private‘ (1942), which uses the same story idea.
Both the vanishing paint and the cannon come in handy, when an evil army invades the countryside, although it remains pretty unclear how our hero conquers the foreign troops. Nevertheless, in the end he’s decorated and earns a kiss from the Dutch girl.
‘Rhythm in the Ranks’ is a charming, but uneven cartoon that suffers from an erratic story. The models, colors and staging, on the other hand, are top notch, as always in Pal’s works. The trickery used to make things becoming invisible is very well done.
The evil army of mindless robots, which invade the toy countryside reflect the war era. Yet, Pal’s film never becomes really topical, sticking to the fairy tale world of wonder. ‘Rhythm in the Ranks’ makes great use of two Raymond Scott compositions: ‘Toy Trumpet’ for the marching soldiers, and ‘Powerhouse’ to accompany the evil army.
‘Rhythm in the Ranks’ is available on the Blu-Ray ‘The Puppetoon Movie’
Director: Chuck Jones
Release Date: April 12, 1941
Stars: Sniffles
Rating: ★★
Review:
‘Toy Trouble’ marks the return of Sniffles’s friend the bookworm, from ‘Sniffles and the Bookworm’ (1939) and ‘The Egg Collector’ (1940).
This time the two friends snoop around in the toy collection of a department store. All goes well until the duo encounters a cat.
Like Sniffles himself, the bookworm is more cute than funny, and like most Sniffles cartoons this short suffers from a terrible slowness. The result is a rather tiresome watch. Nevertheless, it contains a nice scene in which Sniffles hides in a row of Porky Pig dolls, predating a similar scene in the Tom & Jerry cartoon ‘The Night Before Christmas’ by eight months. There’s also a mechanical duck, which accounts for some gags that look all the way forward to the elaborate gags of Chuck Jones’s Roadrunner and Tom & Jerry cartoons.
Watch ‘Toy Trouble’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Toy Trouble’ is available on the Blu-Ray set ‘Looney Tunes Mouse Chronicles: The Chuck Jones Collection’
Director: Rudolf Ising
Release Date: August 26, 1933
Rating: ★★★★
Review:
‘We’re in the Money’ is entirely built around the catchy opening tune of the Warner Bros. musical ‘Gold Diggers of 1933’.
The joyous song, with its anti-Great Depression theme is entertaining enough to carry the whole cartoon. It is played and sung by toys and dolls in an apartment store at night. Even coins from a cashier join in, singing ‘we are the money’. There’s also a doll doing a Mae West imitation.
Composer Frank Marsales is on the loose here, and plays endless variations on the title song. There’s absolutely no story, whatsoever, but the cheerful mood is captivating, and despite the lack of real action, the cartoon will leave you with a smile.
Watch ‘We’re in the Money’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘We’re in the Money’ is available on the DVD-set ‘Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume Six’ and the DVD-set ‘The Busby Berkeley Collection’
Director: Wilfred Jackson
Release Date: July 28, 1930
Rating: ★★
Review:
1930 saw a string of Silly Symphonies featuring animals performing endless dance routines. In ‘Midnight in a Toy Shop’, however, the dancing is being done by toys and dolls. Not that it makes a difference…
‘Midnight in a Toy Shop’ introduces the small spider, who would also be the hero of ‘Egyptian Melodies‘. To escape the freezing cold the spider enters a toy shop. First he’s afraid of everything, but when he’s playing the piano, the dolls and toys come to life, dancing to his tunes. This results in a very, very long dance routine, rendering ‘Midnight in a Toy Shop’ a rather dull short. However, in the first scene the spider leads the viewer into the scenery, and we as an audience, explore the toy shop with him. This story idea would be perfected in the intro of ‘Pinocchio‘ (1940), of which the intro of ‘Midnight in a Toy Shop’ is an embryonic version.
‘Midnight in a Toy Shop’ contains a strange mixture of primitive and more advanced designs and animation. It starts with some stunning effect animation of snow, and ends when a candle lights some fireworks, making the spider flee the shop.
Watch ‘Midnight in a Toy Shop’ yourself and tell me what you think:
This is Silly Symphony No. 12
To the previous Silly Symphony: Arctic Antics
To the next Silly Symphony: Monkey Melodies
‘Midnight in a Toy Shop’ is available on the DVD ‘Walt Disney Treasures: More Silly Symphonies’
Dr. Grob's Animation Review 