Jumping with Toy

This is going to be similarly worded to my previous Baby Huey reviews, because the strengths and flaws are pretty much identical in all.

Generally am not a fan of the character of Baby Huey, a rather one-joke character and especially in his later Famous Studios cartoons annoying. When it comes to Famous Studios' cartoons, there is a general preference for the Popeye, Casper and even Herman and Katnip cartoons. Although they all in all fairness had not so great cartoons in their later years, which was due to an overall decline in quality for Famous Studios due to what seemed like tighter deadlines and lower budgets.

While a few of Baby Huey's cartoons are watchable, most don't do it for me. And 'Jumping with Toy' is a sign of a concept that was amusing the first couple of times but has gotten very tired by now.

As with all Baby Huey cartoons, not without virtues. Some of the colours have a lovely vibrancy and the voice acting is good from voice actors experienced in voicing characters with the same or similar character traits to the ones of the Baby Huey cartoons. The fox is amusing and menacing enough.

Best thing about 'Jumping with Toy' is the music score. Winston Sharples provides yet another outstanding music score, even in mediocre or worse cartoons Sharples' music was never among the flaws (if anything always one of the strengths or the best asset). Also love the lusciousness of the orchestration here and how characterful, haunting and whimsical the music was without going overboard in either, even better was how well it fitted in the cartoon and how it merged with the action.

However, Baby Huey himself is a large part of the problem. There is less of the big heart and good intentions that made him tolerable in his debut cartoon 'Quack a Doodle Do' and a couple of others and even more of the stupidity and dim-wittedness, he is annoying here (his catchphrases were cute and sort of fun the first time but have worn well thin now) and to be honest found myself rooting for the fox, a more interesting and funnier character. Apart from the colours, the rest of the animation is a bit sparse and scrappy as a result of tighter deadlines and smaller budgets that hindered a good deal of Famous Studios' later output.

Dialogue is simplistic and forgettable at best, and the story is very predictable and takes a good while to get going with not even the interplay between Baby Huey and the fox igniting much sparkle. The gags are mostly very pedestrian, sometimes derivative of other cartoons from Famous Studios and other studios and repetitive, apart from the odd mildly amusing one (mainly the expressions and reactions of the fox), and manage to take the fun out of the violence, laying it on too heavy with the execution and pacing it too literally. Consequently, the violence is more mean-spirited more than it is well-engineered or fun.

There is not much Christmas cheer here, the material generally lacks wit and charm and it comes over as tired and mean-spirited, more like the typical Baby Huey meets fox story with a few Christmas elements that seemed only there to attempt to give the cartoon a little more variety.

All in all, okay but rather tired and with not much Christmas cheer. 4/10 Bethany Cox