Neptune Nonsense

Felix the Cat greets all his pets with the same charm and warmth but finds Annabel the goldfish to be under the weather. Surmising that she is lonely in her bowl by herself, Felix sets out to find a mate for her in the sea. His quest to find another goldfish though is made harder due to a misunderstanding that he is trying to catch fish to eat!

I am not familiar with the roots of Felix the Cat so I decided to check out a couple of the original RKO short films to see why he is a famous character. This cartoon appears to be typical which is to say that it is a good example of the stable at the time. The plot is simple enough and gets Felix into this underwater world of fish that is created to reflect the "real" world in certain ways. It is colourful and creative and you can see that a lot of quality is in each frame. It is all put to the music which is wonderfully dated (not meant in a bad way that word) and it's these aspects that make the film so appealing from my point of view. It is very much of its time and it does make one feel slightly warm inside to watch it, which does rather make up for the fact that the clean and wholesome material of the period didn't really do a great deal for me – it didn't make me laugh or impressive me overly with the creativity in the writing even if it did in the design.

Overall then this has the charm and cute appeal that one might expect from films of the period and Felix is very much the core of this cuteness but beyond this warm feeling modern audiences might find it all a bit too simplistic substance-wise even if visually and musically it is a retro-treat.