Braving its early morning start-time, audiences attended the Wexner Center’s Cinevent 36 Sunday morning.
Before the main feature was a selection of short cartoons made by Columbia pictures in the ’30s, ’40s, and ’50s. The selections were a mixed bag from forgotten pieces that should have remained forgotten to a few hidden gems.
“Silent Tweetment,” “Tollbridge Trouble” and “Loco Logo” in particular seem to be blatant rips of the much funnier and more clever Warner Bros. Cartoons. “Tweetment” features a cat who has problems with a canary and makes one believe the garbage bin of the “Sylvester and Tweety” writers had been raided. “Lobo” is like having a talking Wil E. Coyote chase Bugs Bunny (complete with sarcasm) without all the great Acme jokes.
The same can be said of “Tollbridge.” These short films do have a nice primal and simplistic energy going for them as well as decent animation, but the gags are not particularly funny and the frenetic pacing becomes grating after a while.
Slightly better are silent cartoons “Scrappy Party,” “Swing, Monkey, Swing” and “Merry Mannequins.” All of these cartoons have impressive and unusual visuals that are interesting to watch. The lack of dialogue in these stories contributed to the bizarre hallucinatory quality of the films.
A short film featuring comic strip character Lil’ Abner – “Sadie Hawkins Day” – is good. The cartoon revolves around Lil’ Abner trying to avoid getting married by winning a Sadie Hawkins race. A nice comic premise and good comedic timing make this one enjoyable.
The Mr. Magoo short film was one of the highlights of the event. “Pink and Blue Blues” has Magoo baby-sitting for some neighbors with hilarious results. Magoo’s infamous nearsightedness leads to a number of comical situations with some intriguingly off-kilter background artwork.
The best of the cartoons presented was “Christopher Crumpet.” The cartoon is about a boy who throws a tantrum by turning into a chicken until his parents give him what he wants, which is a rocket ship.
The animation in the cartoon is extremely inventive, using collage at certain points as well as animating the cartoon being drawn. It also uses a very minimalist style that makes the whole thing feel like a story a parent is telling his or her child and making it up as they go.
The main feature for the event was the 1945 comedy “A Thousand and One Nights.” The film is a tongue-in-cheek parody of the “Thousand and One Arabian Nights.” The film is middling, and the acting is fairly typical of a 1950s comedy in a period setting but comes off either too stiff or too loose in many of the scenes.
Most of the actors don’t seem to realize they are in a comedy. Two of the actors Phil Silvers – who plays Aladdin’s sidekick – and Evelyn Keys – as the genie – pepper their performances with colloquisms that add a lot of humor to the story.
Silvers, who even wears Buddy Holly-style glasses, is the funniest part of the film, making a number of anachronistic references that break up what would be merely another film in the “Arabian Nights” genre.
The sets are appropriately overblown and opulent, and pretty artificial-looking. The movie is filmed in Technicolor which adds to the film’s fantasy aspect and enhances the super-realism of it.
The film is enjoyable in parts, but bland in others. Even the great ending doesn’t really help the film raise above mediocrity. It is briefly diverting but, like the event as a whole, nothing one would wish for from a genie.
