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Fantastic!

It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

. . . in the History of Animation. The fat hairy spider which kidnaps the RED-HEADED BABY doll, with its incessant Evil chortling, is far more frightening than any of the scare-mongers depicted in MONSTERS, INC. This villain's vicious venality goes well beyond mere arachnophobia-inducing loathing. Its visceral vice-grip on your vital organs suggests it's merely a vessel to convey the venom of a Real Life Victimizer through the theatrical venue into veins vibrating with the vicissitudes of very bad vibes. Exactly WHO (to paraphrase Martin Luther) is this Ancient Foe Warner Bros. is warning America against here? Would it be Herb Hoover, about to sic Ike Eisenhower and Dougie MacArthur, with their Legion of Imperial Storm Troopers, upon a defenseless tattered array of 60,000 U.S. World War One heroes, their wives and their children, simply requesting the bowl of soup denied them by the Mr. Potters running roughshod over normal Americans yearning for a nation free of Corrupt Capitalist Child Killers? (There STILL is not even a plaque on our National Mall's World War Two Memorial commemorating the thousands Ike had bull-dozed into the secret Mass Graves below in 1932.) Or could it be Putin's Puppet, the wild-haired bozo with an orange face and tiny fingers, hand-picked by the KGB to undo George Washington and Abe Lincoln's Nation? Elections have Consequences, especially when they're rigged by America's Foreign Enemies!

"Red-Headed Baby" is a cartoon from 1931 that has its 85th anniversary this year already. It is a collaboration between Warner Bros and Schlesinger Studios and the director is the prolific Rudolf Ising. I initially thought it may be a problem with the title including a color and the fact that this is still a black-and-white production, but it turned out fine. It's still not a great achievement by any means, but for 1931, it is certainly convincing. The voice acting was good, shame the actors are not credited, the music was fine too, spirit was appropriate as this film came out during the Christmas holidays. The villain, a nasty spider guy, is interesting and so are the little Napoleon and of course the title character. I enjoyed the watch. Well done, guys. It is in terms of atmosphere and tone similar to some Betty Boop work, but I must say I liked this one here even more than most Betty stuff. Watch it.

Included on Warners' DVD of CIMARRON (1931), what I said about the latter – that it is marred by the primitive technique of the time – also applies to this "Merrie Melodies" cartoon when compared to the studio's heyday in this art form. As was the custom back then, its sole raison d'etre is to promote a current hit tune (for which it is named); this is set against a backdrop of a toy-maker's workshop, where his creations come to life at night, and he eventually joins the chorus at the end. Typical ingredients here are the fact that the titular belle is at once romanced by a toy soldier and coveted by a large spider (which the latter ultimately defeats, with the help of the other toys). In the long run, though certainly a harmless enough short in itself, both the style of animation and the overall approach is very dated and, frankly, too corny to be appealing.

This early Merrie Melodie is fairly lively, concerning a room of toys who dance and sing along to the radio while their creator (Santa Claus?) is asleep.The song 'Red Headed Baby' is first squeaked by a rosy-cheeked doll with the requisite big eyes (one would assume they are blue), and later by a Napoleon clone. It isn't a memorable song, and these aren't memorable characters, but there's a villain (a spider), a chase, and a bit of derring-do before the song plays out.Harman and Ising has started with Disney, working on Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, before taking some of the ideas from that series to develop Bosko for Warner Bros. The trouble with their cartoons are that many are exactly the same, regurgitating the same gags and situations.That said, these cartoons do have a certain historical interest and hopefully they will make it on to later Golden Collection DVDs (even if it is as one or two extras at a time, as a few have been already).