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The Worst Film Ever

Sadly Over-hyped

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

. . . devoting a large part of this first Looney Tune (NOT including the free-lanced outsider pilot proposal) to vivisecting and digesting the House of Mouse's Rodent D'Etre. This vivid incident occurs during the first half of HOLD ANYTHING, during which high-rise construction worker and Warner Bros. Blue Collar Hero Bosko takes a break from Girdering to torture a Dead Ringer for Mickey Mouse. This unfortunate little creature is subjected to a Warped and Anachronistic Version of the X-Games by being forced to perform his 360s, 540s, and 720s tricks off the platform of Bosko's musical saw. After watching (and listening to) Mickey's full repertoire, Bosko allows the saw to slice him in half. Mickey is later beheaded, and immediately after he's "fixed" (like a cheap pop-bead doll) Bosko plops him into the yawning mouth of an insatiable She-Goat. Though Mickey emerges from her tummy trap door after a bit (apparently in deference to younger viewers who might be traumatized by seeing Mickey Trumped out of the goat's butt the natural way), Mickey soon disappears from view as this story segues into Bosko's affair with Honey. (As it says in Trump's Corinthians Two, he no longer has time for childish Disney things.)

Hold Anything (1930) ** (out of 4) Early animated film from Warner before they gave us their more memorable (and better known) characters. Bosko is doing construction where he tries to do everything as if it were a note of music. I know Bosko was probably Warner's biggest character at the time but I don't think he holds up too well (and who knows if he did in 1930). The biggest problem I had with this short was that the music numbers weren't all that memorable and even though this ran under ten-minutes you can't help but feel like it's longer. There are some mice in the film, all looking like Mickey Mouse, which I guess should be expected since the director's originally worked at Disney.

Before Warner Bros.'s animation department gave us Bugs, Daffy, Porky, etc., their most famous star was a small, strange character named Bosko; I think that he looks like a black-face performer. In "Hold Anything", Bosko is participating in construction, when he suddenly gets infatuated with Honey.Mostly, I take little interest in WB's early 1930s cartoons. But I noticed that the credits said "Drawn by Isadore Freleng". Hardcore fans probably know that Isadore was Friz Freleng, later one of the animation department's top directors. Obviously, he had to start somewhere, and this wasn't a bad place. Worth seeing, and available on YouTube.

Since the previous reviewer mentioned most of the details of Hold Anything, I'll just mention that the mice look uncannily like Walt Disney's Mickey. Perhaps not surprising since directors Hugh Harmon and Rudolf Ising had previously worked for Disney as animators when he created Oswald the Lucky Rabbit with Ub Iwerks with the rabbit looking like the Famous Mouse with long ears and a fluffy tail. Another entertaining musical short that seems inspired by the fame of the first successful sound cartoon, Steamboat Willie, that put Mickey Mouse and Walt Disney on the map of iconic status. Worth a look for anyone interested in Warner Bros. animation before Tex Avery arrived to give it a new identity.