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So much average

Sadly Over-hyped

A Major Disappointment

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

One of the best Private Snafu shorts. These cartoons were made for use by the U.S. Army during WWII as instructional films for soldiers. The hope was the grunts would learn what to do (and not to do) by watching buffoonish Snafu make mistakes in humorous fashion. Directed by Chuck Jones with a rhyming script from Dr. Seuss himself. Typically fine voice work from Mel Blanc. Nice black & white animation. The subject for this short is, as you can guess by the title, espionage. Specifically that soldiers should be aware that enemy spies are all around and not to be blabbing military secrets in public. To illustrate this, the short starts with Snafu bragging about having a secret that he can't tell. It doesn't take long before Snafu winds up telling the secret to a beautiful Nazi secret agent. This has disastrous consequences for the American fleet, which leads to a hilariously dark ending for Snafu.

I have no idea if this is typical of the Snafu series, many directed by Jones and written by Dr. Seuss, but I certainly want to see more even if this does not show either master at his very best. Here our private in question blabs his orders to anybody and everybody after vowing to keep it all secret, and of course all the voluptuous babes, bartenders, and even a little guy inside the telephone box end up being broadly caricatured Japanese, German and Italian spies. It all ends quite literally with a big bang and a trip to Hell. Propaganda at it's finest, if awfully frenetic and short.The copy I watched was from "Treasures of American Cinema", volume I, a four-disc set of mostly early shorts and features, all beautifully restored and remastered, with excellent notes and music - an essential set for anyone who wants to better know the history of the American film.

This film must be understood in the context for which it was made. While this is a film made by talent from Warner Brothers (with voice work by Mel Blanc and production by the folks at Looney Toons), it was NOT intended for general release--but was meant to be shown to soldiers to illustrate the importance of keeping troop activities secret. You can tell this is the case for several reasons--the cartoon is black and white (when Looney Toons had just recently switched to color), the guy at the newspaper stand is reading a magazine entitled "SEX" and the female Nazi spy has a radio hidden in her boobs. This was certainly NOT intended to be seen by the kids! So, with it's more adult humor designed to appeal to those in combat, the movie did a wonderful job of conveying its central message in a cute way--using great animation and a crazy rhyming style that is very, very catchy. Even today, this film is worth seeing--not just by history teachers but by anyone wanting a good laugh or wanting to see what life was like during the war.

For several of the shorts in this series, Theodore Geisel (aka Dr. Seuss) scripted and the speech patterns here reflect his quite familiar cadence. It's great! Private Snafu really screws up royally here, which was the point, as the series was meant to show soldiers what not to do and what the consequences could be. These are not balanced and fair cartoons-there was a war on at the time and Germany and Japan were the ENEMY, so the caricatures are not nice. If you are easily offended, you likely won't like these. The series is great and well worth watching. Recommended.