starlac

During Tex Avery’s self-imposed, year long hiatus in 1950, the director chair for his unit was filled by ex-Disney animator/director Dick Lundy, with the apparent hope that he’d be able to bring Barney Bear out of retirement again (or at least that's my understanding given that only one cartoon he made didn’t star the bear). If the year of the short’s release doesn’t tally, then you should know that MGM stockpiled their shorts and released them as needed.

This was a cartoon that I quite liked back in my childhood, though Barney Bear’s cartoons are hardly likely to get the pulse racing, they are more gently in their humour and make a nice break from manic cartoons from Warner Bros. and, well other directors MGM shorts.

For the most part both characters are amiable to each other, although not enough that they could drown you in sentiment but there’s no real antagonist to speak of, which could be said to be a nice change from all the hunter/hunted cartoons that there are out there.

The gags, such as they are, revolve mostly around Jimmy Squirrel doing little things that keep Barney awake. Cracking walnut shells, having a nightmare, and other low-key things like that. If you’re used to and expect the wacky rapid-fire style of other MGM shorts than this may disappoint; it’s more in line with Dick’s other shorts he did at Disney, after all he was a Disney short director. Besides, when he tried to emulate the more zany aspects of the director he was temporary replacing, he never quite hit the mark.

It’s cute, but not too cute as to be nauseating; quietly fun and while it’s not the most gag-filled short ever made, it doesn’t have to be; it fits Barney Bear and the expectations that I have for his character: and it works.

Sometimes, that can be all that you need to be classified as good.

The Grinch Stole Christmas was a huge success, so corporations, greedy as they are, decided to make other specials based on other stories based on Dr. Seuss’ stories, the best two other than the aforementioned, where Norton Hears a Who and The Cat in the Hat adaptations. However there were other ones here and there, like Halloween is Grinch Night.

Firstly, the title is misleading in the extreme because this special has nothing to little to do with the holiday of Halloween whatsoever outside of a passing semblance. The story, which is laboriously explained to us in a telling rather than showing way, is that when the sour-sweet wind blows it sets off two creatures who in turn irritate the Grinch into coming up of his mountain down to Whoville to spread terror and make the place his own until the wind dies down again.

It is worth noting that subsequent re-releases have generally had the sense to throw the “Halloween is” part of the title away, probably realising just how little this special has outside of theme to All Hallows’ Eve.

It’s not made clear where or if this fits in with the timeline or universe of Christmas, or has nothing to do with it. Is this the same Grinch from the more known special? a different one? Is it a retcon, or set prior? Though this really isn’t the special’s real issue in the whole scheme of things.

The animation in How the Grinch Stole Christmas may have been nothing special on a purely technical level, which is the case of many Specials, but Chuck Jones managed to bring the best out of the limited animation available to impressive form. The animation in Night only rises to the level of merely adequate, no higher and even then it’s always evident that much less money went into this special’s creation.

The writing is surprisingly long-winded and extraordinarily talky, with the narrator butting in to inform you that “Eukariah said” several times, a practise that isn’t needed when all the character have easily identifiably, distinct voices. Mostly the text just doesn’t feel up to par with expectations considering that Dr. Seuss is supposable the writer.

The songs – and musical score – are provided by Joe Raposo, who is most famous for writing the music for Sesame Street - with lyrics contributed by Seuss I’d wager, they are as basic, shallow and forgettable as the ones in Raggedy Ann and Andy’s Musical Adventure with Max’s song being far too sappy for its own good. Honestly, it’s hard to imagine that any of the songs here were written by the same man who wrote “Being Green”.

When we get to the events in the Paraphernalia Wagon, it brought to my mind two things: The Pink Elephants on Parade sequence from Dumbo and the inhabitants of Wackyland in the theatrical cartoon Porky in Wackyland, but with the imagination or execution of neither.

As a child the Pink Elephants failed to make an impact on me in any shape or form, except to intrigue my imagination; ditto with the transformation sequence in Pinocchio or any really supposed scary scene from any number of films. After reading some traditional folk tales, the Grinch’s wagon is a mere collection of parlour tricks in comparison.

I’ve no idea how this won an Emmy, probably due to a lack of competition at the time, but while it isn't absolutely terrible it is a shallow retreat by TV special standards and not worthy of the green-furred grouch.

If you want to watch the Grinch, then stick to Christmas, if you wish to watch another Seuss story in animated form, then I would suggest either The Cat in the Hat, or Horton Hears a Who (the original specials preferably).

In the UK this was just another Hanna-Barbera cartoon on Boomerang, its roots as part of the Cattanooga Cats never mentioned. This repackaging of Hanna-Barbera’s older cartoons is nothing new, especially in the UK; in fact here it appears to be the norm for most of the studios work to be shown as their separate segments. This is why I’m only able to make a connection between the segments these days, when I have much more information available, be it the internet or the fairly extensive book on Hanna-Barbera that I have.

There’s not a long to expect from a cartoon of this period, television animation was, and had been, made on the cheap and so had to reply on strong poses, good storytelling and well voiced dialogue to get through. Many cartoons of the time focused on wordplay and character tics. It’s the Wolf gets it animation poses right for the most part, and this is a generally okay package to come out of late sixties television.

It’s the Wolf follows the day-to-day lives of three characters,: Lambsy, Bristle Hound and Wilbur Wolf in the sort of thing that Hanna-Barbera – and yes, Warners – had been doing for years. In fact the first thing that came to mind upon watching the show was that it had a bit too much in common with the earlier Yakky Doodle, only Lambsy isn’t quite as obnoxious as that loudmouth duck.

Wilbur is the best character of the show,* though to be fair he really doesn’t have much in the way of competition, he makes humorous jokes and jives, not laugh out funny ones, but they do break the monotony; he constantly breaks the fourth wall (although so does Lambsy how and then), and also has the benefit of an unusual design with his short, stocky legs and long body. Basically the wolf steals the show and is essentially the only reason to watch it.

The other two characters don’t fare as well; the dog doesn’t do a lot outside of make the occasion droll comment and, naturally, come running after Lambsy’s trademark titular yell. Otherwise he almost might as well not be there, in spite of the fact that his presence is necessary.

Lambsy has Daws Bulter’s Elroy’s voice, which is also somewhat similar to Auggie Doggy’s and likely other characters - I think I’ve watched too many HB cartoons of late. Lambsy has his moments, but most of the time I ended up wishing that the creator’s would just let Wilbur eat him.

The show has its fair share of corny dialogue and ten-a-penny jokes, and I’ll admit that it made me chuckle when Wilbur exclaimed “It’s the Dog! It’s the Dog!” when Bristle caught up with him on one episode I saw. Though I later heard the line later from Lambsy, ironically it was an earlier aired episode; it wasn’t as funny the second time.

And that is kind of the problem in some ways, there isn’t much to find beneath the surface of these late Sixties cartoons, it’s what you seen is what you get, and the problem is that while there is certainly enough on the surface to entertain, there’s not much else in here. Its entertaining enough to past the time for sure, but it is also highly derivative and not hugely memorable outside of its often heard namesake to earn much more than a mere passing look once in a while.

*In fact he was the only character from the whole enitity of The Cattanooga Cats to appear in a later cartoon.

When I was younger, I had a fairly large coffee table edition/collection of Richard Scarry’s popular books, they were good to look at back then, particularly the cross-sectioned parts that showed you how paper/electricity/bread/etc was made.

Like many very popular and successful children’s books, Scarry’s busy world got a series made, and luckily it wasn’t made by DiC or someone else who could be said to lack ability. It was instead created by Cinar, who have had a decent track record in translating printed media to an animated one; the best company for this is probably Nelvana, but yeah, Cinar aren’t too shabby.

For those who haven’t picked up one of Richard Scarry’s books, the series mostly follows the day-to-day lives of two of Busy Town’s citizens, Huckle Cat and Lowly Worm, but segments also follow other characters. Many of these other characters aren’t from Busy Town at all, but hail from some other Country, and are also generally detectives of some sort. They pretty much run the same as each other in the end. Lowly acts as a kind of narrator in these segments, as well as a bridge, they main purpose would apparently show the customs of other Countries or something of that nature, but you’d likely not learn that much from them as these segments tend to be a chase cartoon format variety.

The animation is certainly decent and up to the standards of the early to mid-nineties. The art style follows the conventions of its source material to the letter, looking very much like one of Scarry’s drawings come to life. The voice acting is good and the opening theme is catchy, in spite of being overly cheerful, song segments cover the edutainment parts, a throwback from the eighties perhaps, but are actual fair to listen through.

This is a series intended solely for children and it definitely feels like it at times; there isn’t as much for adults to enjoy, outside of perhaps nostalgia. This represents a problem, because I’m of the opinion that the best animation should be equally able to entertain adults and children. Of course this is also the problem with adapting media from one format to another and Busy World is as close a proximity to the books as can be.

Busy World is enjoyable to a degree in small doses, but there no real hook to keep the interest for anything longer, in essence you could easily compare it to another of Cinar’s cartoon series Arthur, just for the previous generation, both are nice to watch on a raining day, but neither is very fulfilling.

Generally 2DTV suffers from the same problem that all broadcast satire suffers from eventually; it dates quickly, and is so precise a lot of the time, to the point where in a decade or two people will wonder what all the fuss was about.

I can’t remember as much about 2DTV as I probably should, but I do remember that for every gag that worked they were two or more that didn’t, the animation was done in flash back when such a thing was more a novelty, rather than the norm it is these days, it was mostly competent if lacking. Many of the production crew and some of the voices were done by the same group of people who did them way back on Splitting Image and are still doing the same thing today, let’s just say that they do a good job of it pretty much all of the time.

Ultimately trying to describe the appeal of this show – such as it has some – to anyone outside the U.K. might be like Americans trying to describe the appeal of The Daily Show to Brits (well to me at any rate), it’s probably going to be difficult.

I remember the ruckus that happened when they tried to adapt Spitting Image for the U.S. market, it didn’t work. America apparently just wasn’t ready for that kind of all-out attack on its own country or its leaders, after all it’s unpatriotic and America’s a very patriotic country it would seem.

Ultimately, I suppose it has to do with a Country's collective sense of humour when it comes down to political satire and suchlike.

As you might guess by the image of ex-President George Bush being given advice by a sock-puppet*, or the image above this review of Prince Harry, heir to the throne dressed up as Ali G, that blatant attacks on public figures are doable in the UK, although it pretty much generally has to be a satire and generally the persona’s of the mocked are so outrageously ridiculous as to be basically inoffensive by most people.

It was once said of Spitting Image that celebrities and politicians mostly loathed having a puppet of themselves on the show, but worst still was if you wasn’t depicted, effectively meaning that you weren’t important enough to even warrant mocking.

If I’m mentioning Spitting Image a lot in this review it’s because that in essence 2DTV is the spiritual successor to it in terms of content if not format. The problem was that Spitting Image’s bite was fierce and unrelenting in just how far it sometimes went and broke a few boundaries in what could work on British TV in the process. Five years after it finished airing, 2DTV just felt weak and mild in comparison.

Looking back at it, it also hasn't aged as well as its predecessor either.

*Actually it’s just a sock.