Starring: Anonymous Singers and Voice Actors
Director: Mannie Davis
Rating: Six of Ten Stars
Cubby the Bear tries to sneak into the hottest new show in town and ends up conducting the orchestra.
The title of this 1933 entry into Van Beuren's anthology series Aesop's Fables, "Opening Night", can be taken in at least two different ways. The first, and most obvious, the setting is the opening of a new show at the Roxy theatre. Secondly, this cartoon was the first appearance of Cubby the Bear, an attempt on the part of the Van Beuren Corporation to come up with a recurring character for Aesop's Fables. (They were possibly taking this step because the unofficial recurring characters--Milton Mouse and Rita Mouse--were coming increasingly under threat from the Walt Disney Corporation which was annoyed by the way the pair had increasingly come to be off-color copies of their successful Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse characters.)
This first outing for Cubby is a little uneven quality-wise. After a mystifying opening scene involving Santa Claus (probably an artifact of the film's original release date), viewers are treated to a series of repetitive and barely amusing gags as Cubby tries to sneak into the theatre. Once our pint-sized hero gets inside and ends up in front of the orchestra, things start getting better and a lot funnier.
As is almost always the case with a Van Beuren cartoon, the best part is the music. the cartoon opera (which I think is a hybrid of "Carmen" and "Faust") is hilarious and the action is perfectly matched with the music and the singing. They didn't quite go as far as I think they could have gone with the diminutive romantic lead and the big-breasted diva during the operas climax; if they had gone even more risqué, I think the bit would have been even funnier.
In fact, this might be problem with "Opening Night" in general. The best Van Beuren cartoons are usually so wild that they enter the realm of the surreal. Here, although there are several impossibly bizarre moments, none rise to the level of crazy that one can find in the best "Tom & Jerry" entries. As a result, we've got something here that's a bit slow at the start and eventually gets into the silly and cute territory, and which ultimately feels like it never reaches its full potential.
"Opening Night" was the first of somewhere between 17 and 20 short features starring Cubby. I'll eventually get around to watching and reviewing all of them in this space. In the process, I will also discover which source is correct on the number of Cubby cartoons that were produced.
As is almost always the case with a Van Beuren cartoon, the best part is the music. the cartoon opera (which I think is a hybrid of "Carmen" and "Faust") is hilarious and the action is perfectly matched with the music and the singing. They didn't quite go as far as I think they could have gone with the diminutive romantic lead and the big-breasted diva during the operas climax; if they had gone even more risqué, I think the bit would have been even funnier.
In fact, this might be problem with "Opening Night" in general. The best Van Beuren cartoons are usually so wild that they enter the realm of the surreal. Here, although there are several impossibly bizarre moments, none rise to the level of crazy that one can find in the best "Tom & Jerry" entries. As a result, we've got something here that's a bit slow at the start and eventually gets into the silly and cute territory, and which ultimately feels like it never reaches its full potential.
"Opening Night" was the first of somewhere between 17 and 20 short features starring Cubby. I'll eventually get around to watching and reviewing all of them in this space. In the process, I will also discover which source is correct on the number of Cubby cartoons that were produced.
For now, I invite you to check out the subject of this post by clicking below. I hope you enjoy it. If you do (or if you don't!), feel free to leave a comment.
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