The Big Cheese has a visit from the Mouse

Big Cheese (1930)
Starring: Anonymous Voice Actors (but there are no important spoken lines)
Directors: John Foster and Manny Davis
Rating: Four of Ten Stars

A boxer from the rough side of town trains for the big prize fight while bullying all who crosses his path.

"Big Cheese" is one of the lesser efforts from the Van Beuren animators--there's excessive looping, gags that get dragged out past the point of being funny, and sloppy animation that leads to character's changing appearances for no reason. Oftentimes, such weak efforts are saved by excellent music and/or songs, but that's not even the case here. There are just enough gags that work to hold a viewer's, and there's also a healthy dose of bizarre, surreal, and out-of-left-field cartoon character transformations to keep the "what the hell am I watching" quotient at an acceptable and entertaining level. And the prize match is mostly hilarious--even if they don't quite pull off the ending.

Despite its overall weakness, this COULD have been a Five-Star rated cartoon, or perhaps even a Low Six if someone, at some point during the production process, had said, "Hey... this story-thread that starts when our Mickey Mouse look-alike character shows up? We just sort of drop it when it really should come back around in the big finale! In fact, we set it up perfectly to do so--so why don't we do it?!" (Basically, Mickey Mouse gets bullied by the boxer, gains super-strength, and then wanders around a bit punching things. If someone who worked on "Big Cheese" had even the slightest notion of how to tell a story, he would have been present for the chaotic brawl at the end of the cartoon, and he would have kicked everyone's butt.)

I have perhaps given a mild spoiler above, but I don't think so. At most, I've given you what you need to not waste your time with this one, if you're a Van Beuren fan. (On the other hand, if you enjoy a good boxing spoof, you'll like boxing match during the second half... and if you're on a quest to watch all the appearances of the Van Beuren Mickey Mouse knock-off [like me], then you'll want to check this out by clicking below.)