Am a big fan of animation with Disney and Looney Tunes being particularly big influences, but would be lying when saying that everything animated is great. Not so, there are numerous animated films/shows/cartoons that are not even good and some even terrible. Like to love quite a lot of Fleischer Studios' work too, but at the same time not all their output worked for me especially their later stuff when they declined.
So there is no bias towards them on both sides of for and against. Despite being one of the lower rated cartoons in Fleischer Studio's "Color Classics" series, to me 'The Tears of an Union' is not one of the worst of it. It is not one of the best either, if anything it is one of the difficult to rate and review ones and just below being one of the middling ones and more in the mixed feelings category. Actually had to rack my brains on what to write and how to express it, which is usually not a problem for me.
There are things that didn't work from personal opinion. Along with 'The Fresh Vegetable Mystery', 'The Tears of an Onion' one of the strangest of the "Color Classics" series, considering the premise it was clear it was meant to be. Did feel though that the cartoon overdid the strangeness, becoming uncomfortably bizarre, and didn't have enough of anything else to balance it out. What little there is of the humour is, apart from the use of some cool contraptions and the onion's fumes getting to the caterpillar, rather corny and occasionally on the mean side. What was intended to be cute comes over generally as pretty bland, especially the characterisation of the onion, and any charm is lost under all the weirdness going on.
Have to agree that the story is very hackneyed, well when it was somewhat discernible. It never really came to life and there are no real surprises, the outcome of the conflict being obvious early on. It is also wrapped up too tidily with a sort of ending one has seen better done elsewhere and pretty old before this was made and released. With the exception of one, other than seeing vegetables as you've never seen them before and won't look at them in the same way again, the characters don't have enough to them to make them compelling. Agree too that it is not one of the better animated cartoons from the studio, the fluidity and finesse aren't there and they were things actually that were apparent in some of the studio's decline era cartoons.
Not that all the animation is bad, actually the colours are never too drab or garish and a lot of care clearly went into the backgrounds. The opening shot was nice. The music is the best asset in 'The Tears of an Onion', the way it's orchestrated is sumptuous and clever and the amount of lively character in the scoring is also striking.
It may be low on humour, but there are some amusing and cool moments such as the reaction of the caterpillar to the onion's fumes. The caterpillar is both amusing and formidable, by far the most interesting character and the only one actually. Jack Mercer does what he can and comes off better as the caterpillar.
On the whole, alright but unexceptional. 5/10
