Ko-Ko's Martian Adventure

Trip to Mars (1924)
Starring: Max Fleischer
Director: Dave Fleischer
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

Over Ko-Ko the Clown's objections, the animator (Fleischer) sticks him in a rocket and shoots it at the moon... but Ko-Ko ends up crashing on Mars instead. Ko-Ko has the last laugh, however, when the animator also ends up in space.

In "Trip to Mars", the Fleischer Brothers once again effectively show off their ability to convincingly make it appear as though animated character Ko-Ko the Clown has leaped from the cartoon universe and into this one. The interactions between him and the live-action Max Fleischer is particularly fun in this one--with the moments when Max picks Ko-Ko up by his collar and puts him inside the rocket that is intended to take Ko-Ko to the moon; and when Ko-Ko and Max are both riding in the "Mars Rover" as the film is careening toward its close.

As impressive as the mixture of live action and animation is in this film (especially when considering its age), it falters a bit when it comes to the story. I'm not sure how I would have ended a short film that features its stars being blasted all the way to Mars via cartoon explosives, but I like to think that if I put my mind to it, I could have come with something better than what we got here; it makes no sense. (And if you watch the film--which you can do, right here from this post--you may say "Miller... you're asking for THAT to make sense? They go to Mars, the run around on the rings of Jupiter, and you want an ending that makes sense?!" And yeah... I would want it to make sense in the context of a world where animated characters emerge from the ink well and interact with human beings, and then return to the ink well. When we get to the end of "Trip to Mars", the rules of that world seem to be violated in a major way. And with that said... I DO see a way that the ending works, but it breaks the fourth wall to a level that even *I* think is a bit much. Or maybe I missed something? Check out the 'toon below and let me know what YOU think of the ending.)

The weak ending aside. "Trip to Mars" is a bucket full of strangeness that's worth the few minutes it'll take to watch it. The purely animated sections where Ko-Ko deals with Martians and their civilization are also a great deal of fun... although I think he would have been happier if he'd run into some of the Martian princesses that are featured every now and then on this blog. Max certainly would have been.