Love and Curses

The Looney Tunes cartoons we all know and love today were mostly made from the early 40s through the 1950s. However, the studio had been making cartoons long before this. Unfortunately, most of their output during the 1930s was pretty saccharine--with lots of cute singing animals and the like. Fortunately, this one is pretty good and lacks the cutesy look of previous outings.

This film is a parody of the old melodramas made in the early years of film as well as which were performed by traveling companies in local theaters. The characters are all caricatures--complete with a villain in mustache (much like Snidely Whiplash), a manly hero and a damsel in distress. However, it begins in the present time of 1938--with an elderly couple reminiscing about how they met. At this time, the old story is enacted--complete with a lot of corny but funny jokes. Not a great film but for the time, pretty good stuff from Looney Tunes. And, in case you want to see it, it's included as a special feature with the film "Gold Digger in Paris"--an odd but enjoyable musical starring Rudy Vallee.