The Stop Button
blogging by Andrew Wickliffe
Category: Cartoon
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I find Small Fry to be a little confusing. Not just in the narrative, though the plot also has an incredibly big hole, but the approach in general. It’s a Toy Story short, only MacLane gives it enough plot it could be a feature, not just a short. A “Happy Meal” version of Buzz Lightyear…
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Is that Porky Pig cameoing in The Great Piggy Bank Robbery? I kept expecting him to be revealed as the big villain. The story concerns Daffy Duck getting clomped on the head and imagining himself in a Dick Tracy adventure. Now, for Tracy fans, there’s a lot to see, including some inventive takes on the…
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So all you need to make Daffy Duck an incredibly sympathetic character is Porky Pig. In Daffy Duck Slept Here, Porky’s a traveler in search of a hotel room. He ends up lodging with Daffy, only they haven’t met yet. Once they do, the majority of the hilarity ensues. And it is hilarity. Slept Here…
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Cartoon short tries way too hard to be grown-up (Catwoman’s saving strippers from human traffickers) and some of the action is really silly but Montgomery’s direction is spectacular enough to get it successfully through its fifteen minutes. DVD.Continue reading →
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In the last minute and a half of The Hep Cat, Clampett finally comes up with some really interesting shots. The short’s a cat and dog one. It follows the standard. Dumb dog versus a mean, vain and not much smarter cat. The titular hep cat breaks out into a song routine, but it’s not…
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There aren’t any real gags in The Goose Goes South until the finish. And that gag is sort of predictable. The cartoon concerns a goose who can’t fly and therefore has to find other ways south for the winter. The uncredited narrator explains the goose’s problem and describes some of his adventures. But The Goose…
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The animation in Lonesome Ghosts is so exquisite, it seems impossible the narrative could screw it up. Though, when the cartoon moves into a haunted house from this amazing outdoor scene, I suppose the possibility is there. The cartoon is Mickey, Donald and Goofy as ghost hunters. They run into trouble with these four ghosts—who…
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I have some not insignificant problems with Mouse Wreckers. First, the cartoon is almost entirely beautiful. Great backgrounds, great talking mice, almost everything. Except the mice’s victim, a cat. The animation on the cat is fine, but the design of the cat itself is awful. It frequently disrupts otherwise fine shots. Second, the cat’s innocent.…
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I wasn’t sure what I was going to say about Conrad the Sailor when it started. It seemed pretty simple–Conrad is a lame cat sailor and Daffy Duck makes fun of him. It was a simple case of Daffy being a bully. Maybe I could have done something about how cartoon icons are often callous…
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I’m sorry, I think I missed something… did Bugs Bunny just kill the Easter Bunny? Or did he just maim him? Easter Yeggs ought to be a lot better. It’s got an Easter Bunny who conspires to get out of his duties on an annual basis by acting emo, it’s got Elmer Fudd and it’s…
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Screwball Squirrel opens with the protagonist mocking a Disney-like cartoon squirrel and sending him packing. The Disney-like squirrel sounds and looks enough like Thumper from Bambi I forgot Thumper was a rabbit. This moment establishes the cartoon—because the protagonist, the never named Screwy Squirrel, is mocking the cute squirrel to the audience. Avery doesn’t do…
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For lack of a better word, Balloon Land is disturbed. It’s a cartoon about a magical place where everyone is a living balloon. Not just people, but plants too. Objects are solid though. The new balloon people–Iwerks opens showing the reproductive process–are made through one creature’s snot and then inflated. We later learn balloons can…
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Superman/Shazam!: The Return of Black Adam is not particularly good. It has a lot of problems, which I’ll enumerate, but it also has a lot of undeniable strengths. I’ll start with those…. I mean, it’s got James Garner voicing an old wizard. That casting alone makes it worth some kind of look. And Dos Santos…
The Stop Button 