Mother Goose Melodies

So a rather ginormous version of Old King Cole summons various classic storybook characters to parade and dance around his court for his own amusement! This Silly Symphony is alright to watch but it just feels a little weak and thin all around, it's just nursery rhyme characters singing and dancing with no real framing story, it's pretty standard and doesn't grab the viewer very much.. I enjoyed it the most during the sequence after Mother Goose presents the book of fairytales to the king, that's what I think is the best thing about this particular Symphony, the free form animation of the storybook sequence and how it demonstrates a little of what the animators were capable of in terms of crafting a cute and lively procession of characters doing fun and silly gags. I loved the way the action in the pages moved like a movie and how the characters kind of run into each other's stories and mix elements of them together, like hoe little Bo-Peep's lost sheep falls into some muck and becomes Ba-Ba Black Sheep! The creativity shines in one part but it's definitely not one of the Symphonies best offerings. They did everything they do here much better later on in a mostly truly wonderful series 💫

Not a terrible short by any means and certainly as another reviewer put it "no classic", but I wouldn't call this an awful "relic". It's just uninspired. The animation, the concept, and the gags are all weak. In fact, many of the visuals and jokes are reused from earlier Silly Symphonies without any upping of the ante or reworking.

It was not uncommon for Disney to reuse material from past work, as many of the Mickey Mouse shorts were essentially remakes of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoons from the silent era (Building a Building (1933) is a remake of Sky Scrappers (1928), Ye Olden Days (1933) a reworking of the concept of Oh What a Knight (1928)), but at least they added new material to shake things up and improve upon past work most of the time. Mother Goose Melodies (1931) is just plain dull, even for those not familiar with silent Disney or other Silly Symphonies.

Did you know that Humpty Dumpty fell off the wall because a goose hit him with Jack's and Jill's pail? This is one of the many interesting takes this Silly Symphony has on the nursery rhymes many of us have heard countless times. As in most Silly Symphonies, many of the jokes are dated, and it is all too obvious that this work comes from a time when simply cartoons put to music itself was cool and funny. However, there is still plenty left for modern audiences to enjoy. Additionally, the music is quite fun and takes you immediately to a childlike mind-set. As in many early Disney cartoons, half of the laughs come from noticing the absurdities and oddities. Before Monty Python put King Arthur on an imaginary horse and gave the king a servant with the job of clicking together coconuts, Disney put Old King Cole's trumpeters on children's stick horses and gave the king a servant with the job of holding up the king's enormous stomach. This animated piece is an excellent example of where a great amount of our humor comes from; and it's still pretty dang funny.

A Walt Disney SILLY SYMPHONY Cartoon Short.

Old King Cole has arrived for an outdoor entertainment. The MOTHER GOOSE MELODIES begin when the old dame opens her book of Nursery Rhymes and several characters appear to perform for the King.

An interesting little film, with much action for eye appeal. It is fun to spot & identify the various characters. Clarabelle Cow has a couple of cameo appearances, first bestrewing the King's path with petals; later she plays the part of the Cow That Jumped Over The Moon. Disney would remake this cartoon in color - as OLD KING COLE - three years later.

The SILLY SYMPHONIES, which Walt Disney produced for a ten year period beginning in 1929, are among the most interesting of series in the field of animation. Unlike the Mickey Mouse cartoons in which action was paramount, with the Symphonies the action was made to fit the music. There was little plot in the early Symphonies, which featured lively inanimate objects and anthropomorphic plants & animals, all moving frantically to the soundtrack. Gradually, however, the Symphonies became the school where Walt's animators learned to work with color and began to experiment with plot, characterization & photographic special effects. The pages of Fable & Fairy Tale, Myth & Mother Goose were all mined to provide story lines and even Hollywood's musicals & celebrities were effectively spoofed. It was from this rich soil that Disney's feature-length animation was to spring. In 1939, with SNOW WHITE successfully behind him and PINOCCHIO & FANTASIA on the near horizon, Walt phased out the SILLY SYMPHONIES; they had run their course & served their purpose.

This kind of thing may well have fascinated children in 1931, but it's relic of a long-gone era in animation when watching it from a modern point of view, only without any nostalgia.

Old King Cole is being entertained outdoor by various nursery rhyme characters who sing and dance. Only the materials for this cartoon are obviously so degraded that you can barely understand anything they are saying now. A prototype characters can be spotted among the basic, low grade, black and white animation.

This is no classic. And will likely be only watched once by even Disney completists.