Starring: Anonymous Voice Actors
Directors: John Foster and George Rufle
Rating: Five of Ten Stars
Tom and Jerry build an experimental rocket intending to go to the Moon. After the rocket misfires, out heroes instead find themselves exploring a strange world at the bottom of the sea and frolicking with mermaids.
The title made me excited for this one, and I hoped I was in for surreal sci-fi weirdness similar to "Astronomeous" or "The '?' Motorist". Instead... well, let's just say I was disappointed. This Tom and Jerry installment has the crisp, fluid animation that I so love in this series, as well as a hefty amount of the cartoon physics and physical transformations that I love in many of the cartoons from the late 1920s and early 1930s, but I just couldn't enjoy this one.
I can't really point to something that made me cringe or that I found boring--I just wasn't engaged with the one I the way I've been with some of the other "Tom and Jerry" installments. Maybe it's because I can't watch it through th eyes of a 6 year-old, and so I couldn't get past the notion of Tom and Jerry surviving, not to mention singing and dancing and playing the piano, on the bottom of the ocean as easily as they would on land. Maybe it's because the music wasn't as good in this one as in some of the others. I don't know... I just couldn't get into this one the way I did with "The Piano Tooners", for example.
That said... "Rocketeers" did contain both the most horrific scene I've ever encountered in a cartoon, as well as one of the cutest. The first involves Tom and Jerry merging into a single, singing creature, while the second is them dancing and singing with mermaids. The unbridled insanity of cartoons from the late 1920s and early 1930s is both the stuff of dreams and nightmares...
Why don't you take a few minutes out of your day and check out "Rocketeers" for yourself? I've embedded it below for your convience and viewing pleasure. I would also love to hear your opinions!
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You had me expecting something “meh”, but I quite enjoyed this ! I found it pretty funny at times, more than I’d usually laugh at an old cartoon actually. All the scenes and gags were funny, or at least amusing, the barber shop pole when the fish came to get a haircut, the angry baby and mommy, the skeleton catching fish, the waiter skeleton and then the mermaid sequence lol. Yeah it was kinda weird when their mouths joined into one, but eh, that’s the pre-code era cartoons for you ! The song wasn’t too bad, just your typical cute late 20’s-early 30’s cartoon song lol. I guess that fact that these cartoons make no sense is why I enjoy them, it always make me go “Ugh, why ?” in a funny way. This wasn’t one of the greats, but it wasn’t a bad cartoon at all either ! 7/10 for me haha
ReplyDeleteThanks for your review! Come back and add your take on something else in the future!
ReplyDeleteNo problem, and thanks I will, if I see anything ! 😊😅
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