Moonbird

Two little boys go for a secret nighttime adventure and have an encounter with a MOONBIRD.

This absolutely charming little film is based on the (apparently) unscripted dialogue between two young brothers, Mark & Hampy Hubley. Created & designed by their parents, John & Faith Hubley, the effervescent quality of the conversation is matched by the limited-animation format which takes the simple story into flights of fancy.

Winner of the 1959 Oscar for Best Animated Short.

While the style of this cartoon was unique (enough to help it get the Oscar for Best Animated Short), this cartoon signaled to me the death of animation. It wasn't until the 1980s that a resurrected respect for decent animation occurred and fortunately today animation is once again respectable. In the interim, studios like Hannah-Barbera, Trans-Lux and Lou Scheimer reveled in horridly low frame-rates, cheap repetitive backgrounds and simplistic animation. Heck, to call some of this animation is a joke--it was more like a fast slide show since the frame rates of 24 fps were reduced in half or worse! While I can't blame MOONBIRD completely (after all, Columbia studios, Creston Studios and others produced cheap animation well before MOONBIRD), it is shocking when you compare the ultra-simple Eric Carle-style cartoon here with gorgeous MGM or Looney Toons cartoons in their heyday.

However, MOONBIRD manages to do something these other hack studios didn't. In this film they basically let two toddlers prattle non-stop and they animated it. The problem is that 2 and 3 year-olds aren't that interesting--at least not for 10 minutes straight!! Watching this film is like being locked in a room with an obnoxious small child who has always been told by his parents that he/she is the next Judy Garland or Marlon Brando. To me, this was about as welcome as a year-long migraine. Do yourself a favor and don't watch this film.

The animated short films of John and Faith Hubley (here credited as Faith Elliott) have an air of improvisation about them. While some, like 'The Hole (1962)' and 'Voyage to Next (1974),' were nonetheless structured around a central theme, the husband-and-wife pair were not averse to simply recording the conversations of their own children and animating whatever flights of fantasy happened to transpire. Of this type of film, 'Windy Day (1968),' in which the Hubleys' daughters make surprisingly profound observations on the nature of love and death, is the most impressive I've seen. 'Moonbird (1959)' won John Hubley the first of his three Oscars (also the first of seven nominations), a victory that signalled the wider acceptance of a more experimental, minimalist style of animated film, as opposed to the vibrant cartoons of Walt Disney and Warner Brothers. With 'Moonbird,' the Hubleys animate the improvised late-night adventure of their two sons, Mark and Ray, in which the pair exchange ideas for capturing a giant "moonbird" in their backyard.

The film has a rough, somewhat scrappy, animation style that isn't necessarily aesthetically attractive, but nonetheless complements the nature of the story – which is that of a hastily-scrawled flight of imagination, a spontaneous improvisation of fantasy. The two main characters appear transparent, as though having been artificially transplanted into their dreamworld. This idea sits at the film's heart. Above all else, 'Moonbird' stands as a tribute to the power of imagination, which is most extraordinarily powerful in one's younger, impressionable years; when Santa Claus was an annual visitor, and one's toys each had a distinct personality. The film does perhaps run a few minutes overlong. The Hubley sons say less of interest than their female siblings a decade later, and, rather than wondering aloud about their emotions and ambitions, instead engage in a charming kind of power-play in which the older son issues orders to his rebellious younger brother. All in all, this is a delightful animated short, and a good introduction to the work of the Hubleys.

Short animation about the adventure of two boys sneaking out in the middle of the night to try and catch the mythic Moonbird and bring it home. The two characters' voices are actually rambles of directors John and Faith Hubley's sons (Mark and "Hampy") that were secretly recorded during an imaginary backyard safari before going to sleep in the darkness of their room. Storyline and visuals may not be above par, but given that the concept was pieced together by chance through the imagination of two little boys definitely makes it worth 10 minutes. Animated by Robert Cannon and Ed Smith, and won an Academy Award for Short Subjects (Cartoons) in 1959.

**½ (out of four)

This cartoon deservedly won an Oscar for Animated Short in 1959. It came about in an intriguing way-John and Faith Hubley taped their two sons at play and structured the animation around the conversation between the two. Fascinating though this is (and the animation is excellent), toward the lattr part of the short, the dialogue starte to become tedious and distracting, at least to me. This technique would be used again to quite good effect in later shorts. Still an excellent short and most recommended.