Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company 'B'

This short, an Academy Award nominee, has great music, mostly the title tune, the animation is very good and it's a fairly decent effort. But most people will never see this, for understandable reasons. The cartoon is one large string of racial jokes and stereotypes from start to finish. If someone ever does a project to collect and release the music from the Lantz material, as was done with the Warner Brothers shorts, this is at the head of the list. Otherwise, you can forget about this one being made generally available anytime soon, if ever. Worth tracking down, but not for everyone. Recommended for the less easily disturbed. This one was over the top, folks.

. . . it is likely to soon be entirely suppressed, squelched, banned and forbidden, due to its controversial nature. The song for which this film is named was the subject of a recent copyright lawsuit, pitting the sects industry against Big Music. Some weak-kneed pseudo "authorities" still refuse to impute any blame on Dick Wagner for inspiring the rise of the National Socialist Party and World War Two. Similarly, there doubtless are ostrich-like apologists who will not admit any connection between the degrading evil of James Crow and the mayhem depicted during BUGLE BOY OF COMPANY 'B,' including the haphazard nonchalance in which a minority recruit is callously fed to a crocodile.

A jazz musician gets drafted to the military and finds himself given the job of bugle boy – a very unpopular job who gets all manner of stuff chucked at him at 5am. Luckily for our main character he finds a trumpet rather than a basic bugle and he is able to call reveille with a swinging jazz number which makes all the difference.

I travel quite a bit so often find myself watching films etc on my tablet while on planes or waiting in airports. In doing this I am always conscious of those watching over my shoulder with no context, so I try to avoid very violent or sexual films as a courtesy to them and me. I mention this because I am incredibly glad that I did not watch this cartoon anywhere but my own home because it may have been hard to explain why I was watching something with such racial caricatures as in this 1941 cartoon. Sadly this is a reflection of the time and, as plankonrules points out, the reason that the cartoon only features black characters is that at the time in the US soldiers were segregated – so this cartoon was not about to show integration even in a fantasy setting!

Anyway, to deal with it first, the cartoon is really racist – massive lipped characters, "yes masta" style voice acting and very dark skin; one can excuse it as being of its time, but it is still offensive to watch and it feels uncomfortable to do so today. On the other side, to ignore this and watch it as a cartoon it does function well because the swinging soundtrack is very enjoyable and the comedy is nicely in support of this. The animation flows well too. It is a shame then that you will struggle to focus on all of the good aspects because there are so many negative ones and it is uncomfortable to watch because of them.

This is my third review of a cartoon nominated for an Academy Award for 1941 having previously done so for George Pal's Rhythm in the Ranks and Friz Freleng's Rhopsody in Rivets. In this one, a black trumpeter gets drafted in the Army and is made to play "Reveille" every 5 am to the consternation of his fellow recruits. But then he gets a magic instrument that lets him play it Big Band-style to the delight of everyone within listening distance. Of course, the title song that was made famous by The Andrews Sisters is warbled by the enlisted men. The depiction of the black men with big lips isn't too offensive to me but I did cringe when one of them showed a pair of dice as part of his teeth! Nice gags throughout and Walter Lantz really keeps things moving so that's a recommendation of Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B.

A vast majority of Walter Lantz's work ranges between well worth seeing and must watches, even if some theatrical series are better than others (not unexpected as that is true of pretty much every animation director). He was responsible for some misses, but on the whole he hit more than he missed. Have always gotten a lot of enjoyment out of cartoons centered around music of all styles and really like this kind of premise, though racial stereotypes have always not sat well with me.

Which sadly is the case with 'Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B', and it really significantly brings down the cartoon and doesn't make it an easy watch. Not just by today's standards, but also for the time. Which is a real shame, because there is actually quite a lot here in 'Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B' that is good and even great. So this ranks alongside cartoons that are not easy to rate and review, which has always made me think especially hard (harder than usual, and this is coming from someone who has always thought long and hard about what to say and how to say it) to summarise.

Beginning with the good, the music once again steals the show, just love its characterful energy, vibrant rhythms, sumptuous orchestration and how cleverly and enthusiastically it's performed all round. Everybody involved clearly loved and understood the music style and made the absolute most of it. Close behind in quality is the animation (apart from some of the character designs), which is lush and colourful with vivid attention to detail and inventive movements in the sight gags. Really loved the Tex Avery-like facial expressions and body language.

There is thankfully a large number of gags and enough of them amuse in a goofy way, especially at the end where the momentum picks up. A few of the characters are quite fun, especially the alligator.

However, there are shortcomings. The story is very slight, even for this type of story where thinness is expected. But there is nothing here narratively, just a stringing along of gags, and it shows in some very uneven pacing with a first act that takes a little too long to get going. While enough of the gags amuse, there are others that come over as very tired and rehashed as well as too corny and cutesy.

Do wish that the characters had more consistent personality, too many of them are too just there. As said, what really brings down the cartoon is the racial stereotyping, which is throughout shockingly distasteful and made me feel really uncomfortable. The characters in question are also not well animated and the bigger lips than usual at a time where black people in cartoons were often portrayed with big lips distracted.

Overall, not unwatchable but it is difficult to get past the stereotyping. 5/10.