Friday 19 August 2022

Goat, Goat, Gone

Two goats, each with a wooden leg, are pitching horseshoes in front of a blacksmith’s shop (in the shot below, one is concealed by the swaying tree).



Uh oh. One goat disappears for two frames. This is cycle animation and the goat vanishes every time.



The short is Ub Iwerks’The Village Smitty where Flip and his girl-friend (why is a frog dating a cat?). They’re at their Mickey and Minnie Mouse-iest in this 1931 short. Flip does an aw-shucks giggle. There’s even a piano in the livery stable. Too bad there’s not much humour in the cartoon.

Theatres had problems with the name of the cartoon, as you can see in the newspaper ad to the right.

3 comments:

  1. The Iwerks cartoons have to be the most consistently unfunny animated shorts ever filmed. There are things going on in them that are apparently supposed to be gags, but they very rarely ever succeed as such. Comedy, obviously, was not Ub's strongest point.

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  2. The way Shamus Culhane described the Iwerks operation, it wasn't conducive to humour.
    I think by the time Tashlin got there, the studio was strictly making the Disney knock-off fairy tales, which kind of wastes his talent.

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  3. Ub Iwerks's aptitude for tinkering resulted in some technological advancements, but clearly he had no story sense, no clue as to creating an appealing character, and couldn't direct for sour apples.

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