It's A Very Special Cel Bloc Xmas: Bedtime for Sniffles (1940)

Bedtime for Sniffles (Warner Bros. Looney Tunes, 1940)
Dir.: Charles M. "Chuck" Jones
Writers: Rich Hogan and Tedd Pierce
Animator: Robert Cannon
Cel Bloc Rating: 8/9

Even though I fully figured out the Santa Claus trick in our family relatively young one Christmas Eve, I think that I have always held out a glimmer of hope that the idea of one's parents holding the responsibility of providing such marvelous magic was just a diversion of Kris Kringle's to keep us from really discovering his operation. As if, at a certain age, he has to convince you that he is a fake after all to avoid any real problems while he continues to fill the stockings of the kids of the world with Christmas presents.

Long after any chance of my having even the slightest faith in invisible sky wizards of the cosmic kind has eroded, there is still appeal for me in the notion of a fat, do-gooder saint who visits one day a year to make the children of the world deliriously happy. (Well, the good ones that is...) I think this is why I maintain a deep fascination with Christmas specials and films where characters are obsessed with meeting Big Jolly himself. And if one of those characters goes to great lengths to stay awake just long enough to catch a glimpse of their holiday hero, then all the better. 

So it is in 1940's Bedtime for Sniffles, a Warner Bros. cartoon directed by Charles M. "Chuck" Jones, then still relatively early in his directing career with the studio. This is the sixth in the Sniffles the Mouse series, generally low-key shorts for Jones considering the classic, high-energy antics he created for Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Marvin the Martian, and Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner. The twelve Sniffles films he directed over several years at Warners were more focused on slow-burning character development and much gentler themes that rarely involved much in the way of the overt comic violence of his later output. If there was an overall "family friendly" series created at Warners in those days, it was probably the Sniffles cartoons.

In Bedtime for Sniffles, the cutesy mouse with the curious lilt to his high-pitched voice (which I refer to as "up-squeaking") is indeed trying to stay up all night to meet Santa Claus. After a rather elegant opening sequence where the camera introduces us first to a group of carolers far below at a building's entrance, and then swoops upward floor after floor to the top of the building, and then shifts across the snowy rooftops through a cold winter's evening to the small, wreathed door and lit windows of what must be the abode of a tiny creature, we meet Sniffles as he opens that very door to take a broom to the snow on his landing. While the score of the film had been playing the carolers' version of Joy to the World on the camera's journey through this holiday postcard setting, Sniffles' purely saccharine voice sings a wavering, off-key nod to Jingle Bells as he sweeps the way clear for Santa Claus.

His cleaning done, Sniffles continues his song as he prepares for his meeting. The camera drifts across his apartment as we see his calendar for December with the days marked off and the date of the 25th in red and circled. We see a letter pinned to his wall that partially reads (in a relative approximation of Sniffles' rambling mode of discourse), "Dear Santa. Please bring me some cheese and some Swiss cheese and some American cheese..." (I imagine it probably carries on in a single sentence and contains further uses of "and" to describe many other cheeses he would like.) There is also a closeup of a watch face (which will become increasingly important through the short as midnight approaches), which bears the name Monahan on it (a nod to Warners' story man, Dave Monahan, a fixture at the studio in the '30s and '40s). The clock reads 10:26.

"Gee!" says Sniffles. "In one hour, and thirty-three minutes, and forty-seven seconds, Santy Claus'll be here!" Sniffles yawns wide and hard, and tells himself, "Golly! I'd better fix some coffee if I'm gonna stay awake that long!" He walks over to a large tin, much taller than himself, that reads "Haxwell Mouse Coffee" with the logo of a white mouse on it. The lid is already askew, and Sniffles takes a mouse-sized cup and dips it up over the edge to sleepily and sloppily yank some of the coffee out. He throws the coffee into a pot that sits over a burner, and turns the flame on, while continuing to half-sing, half-mumble Jingle Bells in his utterly charming way (though annoying to some cartoon fans).

While the coffee heats up, Sniffles continues his song as he wanders over to a full-sized (in human terms) radio. He turns the switch and leans against the device while the then-familiar introductory trio of tones that represented the NBC radio network play. A waltz begins to fill the air in his abode, and Sniffles is swept up by the music. He starts to dance across the room, and rather gracefully too for a slightly pudgy mouse. He finishes his dance when he stops in front of his mirror, where he tells himself cutely, "Thank you!" and his reflection answers back in the same manner, "You're welcome!" (This is not meant to make us believe his reflection has come alive; he is only answering himself, and it is only because the reflection is forced upon us that it seems like the opposite.)

Sniffles starts to size himself up in the mirror, adjusting his hat and posing sideways, saying "Hmm... not a bad lookin' mouse!" He then pretends to be a tough guy, making tiny fists and throwing out a few punches, all the while looking into the mirror. A female voice over the radio starts to warble out the song Sleep, Baby, Sleep, and a lullaby mood starts to overtake Sniffles. He continues to throw punches, but they slow down more and more with each measure, and finally he is face down asleep on a brush that lies below the mirror in the ladies' compact that he uses for a vanity tabletop.

The camera switches angles, and we once again can see directly into the mirror, as the radio starts to play an overly rousing rendition of Jingle Bells. Sniffles wakes up groggily and looks into the mirror, not noticing at first the tiny red marks that the bristles of the brush have left on his face. But then he suddenly does see them, and yells out, "Measles!" As he comes to, however, he quickly realizes that the dots are from the brush and is instantly relieved. He giggles and says, "Thought for a minute I had the measles!"

Time speeds up through a close-up of the Monahan clock-face, but there still seems to be over an hour left to go, and Sniffles is not holding up too well. With Beautiful Dreamer playing on the radio, Sniffles fights to keep an alert smile as he leans against the radio, but his face keeps melting back down into a dull-eyed, slack-jawed pose. He stumbles over to his wash basin and splashes his face with water, and then wipes his face with rice-straw cigarette paper from a book hanging on the wall. Wadding up the paper, he throws the refuse into a hinged walnut with a kick-pedal serving as a garbage can on his floor. "Gee whillikers!" the mouse exclaims. "I hope he comes pretty soon!" He opens his front door, and stares into the snowy night outside. "Gosh --" he starts to say. "Gosh -- can't -- can't go to sleep..." He starts to nod off in his doorway, and adds a final, "Gotta stay awake..."

He is lightly awakened by the whistle of his coffeepot, and as he slowly turns around in his open doorway (good thing no predators are about in this cartoon), he has snow all over his head, nose, and mouth. Barely coherent, he brushes the snow away, and heads over to the coffee. With a steaming hot cup of joe in hand, he goes to sit on a chair (made from an empty spool and a broken section of comb) next to the oversized radio, and says, "Nothin' like a good ol' cup of coffee to keep you awake!" He blows the steam from the cup, and when the steam rolls forward, the camera moves over to the Monahan clock, which bolts down past 11:30 p.m. The camera pans back to Sniffles, who is completely asleep while hunched forward on the chair, the coffee from his now empty cup spilled all over the floor.

After the three NBC tones chime once more, a voice on the radio says, "This is station KFWB, signing off. Goodnight all." Sniffles slowly opens his eyes to see the clock staring back at him. His eyes move in segments down along with the inexorable ticking of the second hand, and he closes his eyes as his body takes over for the ticking, and he almost ends up on the floor. He wakes up and desperately grabs a copy of Good Mousekeeping Magazine to keep his interest. Inside is an ad for a tire company, with a yawning human toddler (in a mouse publication?) carrying a lit candle in one hand and a tire draped over his other shoulder, with the ad copy reading, "Time to Re-Tire". 

Sniffles shows disdain for the notion and turns to another page. This time, as he reads about an "E-Z Catch Mouse Trap," his eyes drift up to his soft, comfortable bed sitting across the room, with a tall lit candle by the bed's side. He drops the magazine and looks away, but sees the reflection of his bed in his mirror. He turns away once more, but this time sees the shadow cast by his bed on the opposite wall. Sniffles slaps his forehead, and walks over once again to his wash basin. 

This time, he buries his entire face in the water for several seconds. However, the basin is clear, and as he opens his eyes, he sees an image through the bubbles once again of his bed. The difference in this case is that he sees a vision of himself sleeping in that very bed. He pulls his face up out of the water and looks forward. Through the drops of water dripping down his face, he again sees himself fast asleep in the cozy bed. 

We next see the dream Sniffles sitting up from the bed and looking in the direction of the real Sniffles. The dream figure motions for Sniffles to come over to him. Sniffles shakes the water from his face in disbelief, but the dream mouse merely pats the pillow next to him. Sniffles shakes his head to signal "No," but the dream version of our hero climbs out of the bed and motions Sniffles forward again. Sniffles' body is leaning forward almost parallel with the ground as he continues to shake his head. But the dream mouse keeps motioning for Sniffles to come to bed. Finally, with a stumble and then a single, slow-motion leap, Sniffles flies softly into bed and bounces under the covers. The dream mouse crawls back into bed in the position that Sniffles has taken, and merges with the mouse's body, disappearing fully. Suddenly, the dream mouse pops back up out of Sniffles body to blow out the candle.

Beautiful Dreamer gives way to Joy to the World on the soundtrack, as we see the night sky through Sniffles' window. Into view rides the shadowy figure of Santa Claus and his sleigh, being driven by six reindeer on their Christmas flight. Iris out.

Bedtime for Sniffles is not filled with the manic humor and violence of most other Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies films, and for once, this makes me a very happy kid. The Sniffles films were always a little bit off from the rest of the pack, relying more on the slow-building curiosity and innocent sincerity of their lead character, a "man/boy"-mouse in human clothing who ends up in often dangerous predicaments -- sometimes accidentally -- just slightly over his rather diminutive stature. Bedtime is probably the skimpiest of plotlines Sniffles ever encountered -- just a mouse sitting around trying to stay awake for Santa Claus -- but the personality of the mouse benefits from this bare bones structure. We always laugh at cooking competition shows when a contestant describes a rather haphazard attempt at a dish as "deconstructed," but in a way, Bedtime somewhat fits the bill.

It's a one-mouse show, where the only other characters we see are the painted carolers in the opening shot (their voices are implied by the soundtrack), the disembodied voices emanating from the huge radio he has somehow crammed into his tiny home (did he build around it? If so, he must have been the biggest sound fetishist of his day), Sniffles' dream self which calls him to bed, and the fantasy figures of Santa and his team, arriving in the nick of time the second Sniffles drifts off to slumber. Apart from these instances, we are up close and personal (as they use to term it on ABC Sports) with the mouse himself. The cartoon becomes a showcase for Jones and his animators to give us nearly every aspect of Sniffles' nature. Mouse under glass, as it were.

I have always found this short to be extremely relaxing and pleasing. I love to sink into the same dream-state in which Sniffles finds himself, and fill my head with dreams of the joy of the Christmas season, the excitement of waiting up for Santa Claus, and the belief that I am special enough that I, out of everyone in the world, will be the one to look behind the curtain to see the magic of Kris Kringle at work. 

I can see Sniffles haters feeling that this is probably their version of hell, being trapped for eight slow moving minutes with a too sugary creation and with no way to escape but turn away or turn it off. I can see it, but I don't agree at all. For those who are able to get past, or even embrace, Sniffles as a character, and enjoy some downtime from the usual breakneck speed of classic animation, Bedtime for Sniffles is exceedingly rewarding. I would also nominate it as one of the best examples of a Christmas cartoon, capturing the essence of the holiday but without laying it on too, too thick.

Getting back to my youth, we used to go next door to our neighbors' (and still friends') house each Christmas Eve. They were Jewish, and naturally didn't celebrate our holiday, but we would go over to their house where we could play with their kids for a little bit while the adults toasted something or other with a beer or wine or whatever. A few steps down our long driveway, however, and our mother would have forgotten something or really needed to use the bathroom or some other excuse, and rush back to the house while we continued on over to the neighbors. A short while later, our mother would show up like nothing had happened at all, and we spend a certain amount of time at the neighbors before heading back to see if Santa Claus had shown up in our absence.

That's right... Santa Claus would wait until we left the house each Christmas Eve to deliver our gifts. Christmas Day itself never meant all that much to me because by Christmas morning, we had already spent half the night playing with our new toys and watching old movies on the local channels. (No cable or VHS in those days.) Christmas Day itself was all about just hanging out doing more of the same, putting up with whatever football games were being played, maybe doing some sledding or snow-fort building, having a big turkey or ham dinner, and then more playing and old movies. Present-wise, we had pretty much shot our load before Santa Claus even reached the houses of most ordinary kids. 

And so I never had to stay up late to wait to try and sneak a peek at Santa Claus, because our parents had a deal worked out with the big guy where he hit our house earlier as long as we weren't around to get in his way. Admittedly, we had the better side of things, but I always remained a tad jealous of the regular kids who got the opportunity to sneak downstairs at midnight to try and figure things out for themselves. Through Bedtime for Sniffles, I still get to dream of this opportunity for myself.

RTJ

*****

It's A Very Special Cel Bloc Xmas: Ginger Nutt's Christmas Circus (1949)

Ginger Nutt's Christmas Circus (A Gaumont Animaland short, 1949)
Dir.: Bert Felstead
Cel Bloc Rating: 6/9

It is time to go a little bit more obscure with our holiday cartoon selections. A few years ago, I posted a trio of other reviews for the Animaland cartoons produced by former Disney director David Hand when he left America in 1944 to start a new animation studio in Great Britain with Gaumont. There were only nine cartoons produced in the Animaland series overall, four of them featuring a squirrel character named Ginger Nutt.

The Animaland cartoons featured a wide variety of animals, with a few species having not been seen much in cartoons from other studios. Hand and his staff selected some characters slightly off the beaten path, though they did have oft-used creatures such as weasels, parrots, lions, cats, and of course, squirrels. But their first film, The Australian Platypus, not only featured a pair of those rather more obscure monotremes as the titular characters, but also gave a prominent role to another Australian pair, two wacky kookaburras, laughing like crazy throughout the short. In The Lion (Felis Leo), after some moments with a more commonplace elephant, we spend time with an African Cape Buffalo and its calf, a species which rarely gets encountered in cartoons.

Hand's more naturalistic approach to his animal films -- while the shorts were actually directed by Bert Felstead -- carried over from his time at Disney, where he made his name directing both Bambi and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. While the animals were anthropomorphized much in the Disney style to the greater degree in most of these Animaland shorts, once in a while Hand's team could get as wacky as something from Warner Bros. or Walter Lantz -- or at least try to get as wacky. In The Cuckoo, probably the strangest and darkest of the Animaland shorts, a truly unappealing lead character gets progressively more unappealing through the entire film, and pretty much ends up where he started.

And in Ginger Nutt's Christmas Circus, they go for straight ahead slapstick. While the other three squirrel films -- Ginger Nutt's Bee-Bother, It's A Lovely Day (both 1949), and Ginger Nutt's Forest Dragon (1950, and the last Animaland film) -- rely more on the cuteness factor of its lead character and in establishing the animal community in which he lives, Christmas Circus shifts Ginger almost entirely to the background while numerous other characters -- in particular, a parrot and a weasel battling over entry to the circus Ginger runs -- get most of the camera time.

The film has a peaceful beginning, as we are shown a pleasant winter night with circus music beckoning in the background, as we see a sign pointing its way indeed "To the Circus". Birds swoop past the sign and over to a large evergreen shrouded by snow beneath a full moon, and we can make the shadowy outlines of forest citizens as they head towards the tree. We see numerous animals of many species piling through the door in the side of the tree, where a bright light shines from within. As the last of the animals enter, we can clearly see another sign reading "No Gate-Crashers".

A parrot named Boko congas his way, with accompanying music, through the snow on his way to the door, and he passes the sign without a thought. He disappears into the door, and then a split second later comes zipping uncontrollably back through the door at a high rate of speed. Boko smash hard into yet another sign stating, "Ticket Holders Only". Hanging upside-down by his feet, Boko slips into the snow below and then pops up out of it. He hears a noise off-camera, and shouts, "Rah! Here's the ticket!"

The camera cuts to Willie Weasel cutting a determined path through the snow, holding a red ticket out in front of him with one hand. When Willie reaches the circus, Boko is standing beneath a sign reading "Ticket Collector". There is an arrow underneath it pointing right, so Boko spins the arrow until it points down at his head. The weasel walks up to the parrot, who asks, "Ticket please?" Willie hands it unthinkingly to Boko, who inspects it and says, "Hmm... nice seat you've got!" Willie then traipses unknowingly into the circus without his ticket, and Boko runs over the poor weasel in order to get to the actual ticket booth inside before him.

A lovely lady squirrel named Hazel, who happens to be Ginger Nutt's girlfriend, takes the ticket from the devious Boko, but when Willie walks up to her counter without one, she puts on the sternest countenance possible from someone running a circus inside a fir tree. "Ginger! Ginger!" she yells. "He's a gate crasher! Throw 'im out!" (It should be pointed out that most of the creatures have British accents. It's not all that important, but when one is used to seeing so many American cartoons, it is very noticeable.) From inside the tree, we see flashes of light and the sounds of a good deal of unseen violence, and then Willie comes flying uncontrollably out of the tree just as Boko did previously. The weasel smashes into the "Ticket Holders Only" sign, causing it to spin around several times. When it stops revolving, Willie is seen with his head and hands sticking through the sign as if he were being punished in stocks.

A transitional wipe takes us back inside the circus, where Boko is seated amongst a large group of other birds. He pulls out a balloon and pops it, sending all of the birds scattering away, leaving him alone happily in the seating section, which naturally is comprised of tree branches, and therefore, for the birds.

Circus fanfare plays. Ginger Nutt is seen acting as ringmaster upon a platform, and a parade begins to march into the center ring. An owl acts as parade marshall, followed by a tall, thin, Father Christmas figure with a human face. A small bird carries a bass drum several sizes too big for him, and just behind is the Cuckoo bird (mentioned earlier in regards to another film), who has about a dozen instruments strapped to his limbs and serves as a one-man band. The small bird can't see where he is going as he bangs his giant drum, and he tumbles and falls through drum. His clumsiness makes him land upon the train of Father Christmas' coat, and pulls it off his body. That "body" is revealed to be two creatures: a rabbit -- namely, Loopy Hare -- who is walking on his hands in a pair of boots while using his feet to hold up a mole named Dusty, who was wearing a human mask all along. Dusty Mole rushes back to angrily collect the Santa costume, and then puts it back on as he stomps out of the circus ring, much, much shorter than before.

Meanwhile, Willie Weasel is attempting to get back inside the circus he should rightfully be attending. He sneaks up to a knothole in the big tree seemingly to peer inside, but then he squeezes his skinny head and streamlined body right through the small knothole. Boko sees him right way, and warns Ginger, "Hey, Professor! Look! A gate crasher! He's got no ticket! Throw him out! Throw him out!" Ginger turns to look with a scowl on his face, puffs up his chest, and heads towards Willie. We then see a repeat from outside of the crashing and noises that accompanied Willie the first time he was thrown out, but this time, he is sent flying towards a gate outside. He goes hard right feet-first through the door of the gate, but then is mystified how in the aftermath the door shows two holes where his feet went through, when the momentum of his body should have created just a single hole.

Inside the circus, Dusty Mole pops up wearing a clown hat from out of the ground, holding a sign that reads "Kobber & Kate - The Kookaburras". Kobber and Kate roll into the ring on a pair of unicycles, laughing non-stop as they start to perform their tricks. A large clown hat drops down out of the sky and lands over the top of Kate. Kobber lifts it up, and Kate is seen taking a bath in the tiniest tub ever seen. The clown hat comes back down and is lifted a second time. Kate is now playing a tiny piano very quickly. A third time, and Kate sits laughing on top of a large pile of fruit eating a sundae. 

Kobber rings a bell on the hat, and Kate comes out through a door in the side. She runs around the hat, leaving Kobber to run inside the hat to disappear. She lifts the hat, and is confronted with a smaller hat. She lifts that, and a third, then a fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh hat are each revealed. The seventh very diminutive hat spins around on the ground in circles, and when Kate lifts it, Kobber is now several sizes smaller than he used to be. He laughs crazily on an equally small unicycle and speeds around her. The unicycle cuts a hole in the ground, and then Kate falls through it to complete the routine.

Chester the Cat is presented as the next act, and the feline spins his way to the top of an extremely tall, striped pole, where he begins a high-wire act perched atop a red and yellow ball. He rolls out onto the wire easily, and yawns as he appears bored by his own act. Down below, Boko decides to cause more trouble, and starts to bark loudly. The cat freaks out, starts running wildly on top of the ball, and then falls hard to the ground, crawling out of the hole his body creates. The ball then hits him on the head and shoots sideways, and he falls back inside the hole. The ball continues to rocket out of the door to the circus, hitting Willie Weasel in the stomach and knocking him into another tree, where he ends up balancing himself upon the ball on a branch before falling down to earth.

Zimmy Lion and Oscar Ostrich are announced by the mole as the next act, and they perform a variation on the old lion tamer routine. With Zimmy sitting inside a cage whipping his tail, Oscar enters the cage as Zimmy holds the door. Zimmy slams the door shut, but it falls off its hinges and onto the ground. The little ostrich is not thrown by this and continues his act. Oscar silently and "bravely" motions for the lion to open his mouth. Zimmy complies, and starts to put his mouth over the ostrich's head. It is quite noticeable that the lion appears to be lacking any teeth. Boko goes ballistic. "It's a fake! A swindle! I want my money back! I bet he's got no teeth!" "Indeed, I have!" says the lion, "Two!" The parrot demands that the lion show them, Zimmy sticks out two non-pointy teeth to the crowd. "Indeed he has two!" responds Boko, adding "Has two! Two two! Get it?" He chuckles, and again says, "Get it?" (Nope, Boko, I really don't.)

One more act's name appears on a sign held by Dusty Mole: "Digger and Dinkum, the Platypusses" [sic]. Dinkum, the girl platypus, hits red and green balls with her tail down low, while Digger, the boy, hits them back to her with his tail while balanced on his hands. [I say hands instead of paws when discussing animal cartoons, unless the animal in question is clearly using his appendages in a natural manner.] Boko continues to be a jackass out in the crowd, screeching, "Platypuses? Platypuses? Pussies! Ack! They don't look like cats to me! Pussies! Cats! Get it!" He laughs once again, but Digger is not happy with the bird's annoying outbursts. Digger smacks several balls in Boko's directions, but the parrot ducks, and the balls each hit Willie Weasel, who was sneaking up on Boko, square in the face over and over. He stumbles backwards back outside the circus tree. Finally, the last red ball smacks Boko in the face, sending him spinning on his branch.

The big finale is next. Most of the performers are balanced atop the ears and arms of Loopy Hare, who himself teeters on a unicycle. While Boko watches, he is unaware that Willie Weasel has returned. Willie grabs Boko, but the bird slips out of his feathers like it was a suit, and they remain in Willie's grasp as the now naked and pink parrot runs across the circus ring. He crashes into Loopy, sending all of the performers sprawling onto the ground, and Boko comes out riding the unicycle away. Ginger Nutt is even angrier now, and he heads towards Boko with his whip. Boko changes direction and crashes through the side of the tree, leaving a hole in his shape, but then rolls back through backwards as Willie stomps slowly towards him.

Willie chases Boko, and when he tries to grab the bird, he ends up taking the unicycle from Boko instead. Riding it now, the weasel continues to chase the parrot, and they zoom right past a massive cannon in front of a sign that reads, "Corny the Cannonball Crow". Corny himself stands next to the cannon, his mouth agape, and holding a match he was about to light for his act. Boko hides inside the cannon, and then comes out the other end to pull the now lit match down upon the fuse. Boko then returns and pulls the safety helmet from Corny's head and puts it on his own. Willie ducks inside the cannon to find Boko, but then there is a huge explosion!

The pair of miscreants fly out through a hole created between the snow-covered branches of the giant circus tree, and they land softly on the snowy ground beyond. They come up ready for fisticuffs, but then Dusty Mole, wearing his Father Christmas outfit, pops up with a sign reading "Peace on Earth" in a fancy typeface. He grabs a hand from each creature and clasps them together. Willie and Boko decide to let bygones be bygones in the Christmas season, and smile and shake hands as bells are heard chiming on the soundtrack. When the mole ducks back down into the ground, Willie grabs the "Peace on Earth" sign and justly smashes it over Boko's head. Boko sees stars spinning around his head, and then the pair are caught within an "iris out" as Willie looks like he is about to land on Boko to continue the beating.

This is the second most violent of the Animaland cartoons, though The Cuckoo, the most outwardly violent, is far, far darker. And, apart from The Cuckoo, the expanded violence doesn't really fit this generally quite gentle series very well. The gags in Christmas Circus are never really all that funny (a couple are amusing), though the pacing does well to impart the sense of slowly building pressure to the climax. The animation, too, is well-turned, and I especially appreciate the detailed backgrounds and use of color. (These were the common high marks of the series throughout its brief run.) Of the individual scenes, while several characters are appealing, the kookaburras come off the best. Their clown act works very well, and would not be out of place in a Woody Woodpecker cartoon. For the most part, a first watch of this short can convince the viewer they are seeing a lost classic of sorts. I had that feeling myself when I first saw it a few years ago.

But there are just far too many characters here crammed into one seven-minute short. Practically every character that appears in the Animaland series (though not quite all) is given screen time in this film. Most of the circus performers have their own films or are supporting characters in the Ginger Nutt films as a whole. As for Mr. Nutt, he gets totally lost in a short bearing his own name, appearing only when he needs to seem angry or leading into the circus. His girlfriend Hazel only has the one scene near the beginning, and the rest of the film is left up to the other characters. This points to how one-dimensional Ginger Nutt is in general -- he is never given much to do beyond act tough or to romance his girl in his films -- and so that he gets lost here is no surprise; it's just disappointing. It almost seems like Hand and his staff had no real faith in the character, though he was apparently merchandised by the copyright holders long after Mr. Hand had departed Gaumont (and animation at that).

As for the Christmas connection, this is another short (as in Broken Toys) that only sneaks in the holiday right at the tail end of the story. Yes, the atmosphere is all wintery loveliness. The circus itself takes place inside a huge evergreen tree. But that is about it for setting a holiday mood (apart from the appearance of the Father Christmas costume) up until the mole pops out of the snow at the end of the picture to remind Willie and Boko of how brotherhood should be upheld. I guess if Animaland were really the province of just cutesy, family friendly characters, that might have been the end of it. 

But then there is that wallop with the sign. Maybe just a few films in, the Gaumont animators were looking to expand beyond the simple animal stories and mix things up a bit. If so, I have to admire their gumption, even if they did it inside just another simple animal story. It is also the one moment where Christmas Circus does succeed in the more manic humor Hand and company are attempting elsewhere throughout the cartoon.

It is also sort of the way this Christmas season feels to me. I am trying really hard to be involved in the festivities -- even knocking out post after post about Christmas cartoons -- but with everything going on in the world, the fact that I am still unemployed after nine months, and now trying to set up my own freelance business -- my head is spinning constantly. I am not in the best place in my head, and I tend to hide my true feelings to the faces that I see every day at home. On top of this, we have three Christmas trees in the house (the one Jen and I used everywhere on our own, and two that belong to Jen's mom). The house has been lightly decorated outside, but our neighbors are going full force with the over-the-top light displays and the generator-driven character balloons. The holiday season just pounds away at you, trying in a passive-aggressive way to force you to be as cheerful and joyful as everyone else is pretending to be.

It feels exactly like someone has smashed a "Peace on Earth" sign over my head. "You will be happy... or else!" It's the "Or else what?" that always pisses them off. And now they are coming in for the kill.

RTJ

*****

And in case you haven't seen it...