The New Car

This film was created by Ub Iwerks for Celebrity Films. Iwerks, if you didn't know it, was a close associate of Walt Disney and helped to create Mickey Mouse. After doing most of the drawings for such classic Disney films as "Plane Crazy", "The Galloping Gaucho" and "Steamboat Willie", soon Iwerks left the company he helped create and became the director for quite a few cartoons--including the Flip the Frog series.

I was not that fond of the first Flip cartoon I watched. However, "The New Car" impressed me for many reasons. Most importantly, it's funny. It also featured some nice animation and the story was fast-paced and entertaining. It all begins when Flip buys a very strange anthropomorphic car--a car that literally stands up on its hind wheels and sells itself! The only negative in the film was the car salesman. This Shylock-like character could be seen by many as being anti-Semitic and I was surprised to see such a character.

The New Car (1931)

*** (out of 4)

Creative Flip the Frog short has our hero out looking for a new car. Once he picks the car the two of them head out where trouble follows.

This entry in the series is another winner and once again the creativity is what really stands out. The film gets off to a very good and funny note as Flip goes to the lot to pick out a car and the car, acting just like a dog, sells itself to where Flip will pick it. There are some funny moments where Flip and the car get into traffic and panic as well as another nice scene where the car runs out of gas and needs a little help. There's even a creative sequence where the car accidentally drinks some alcohol.

This is the most enjoyable "Flip The Frog" cartoons from UB Iwerks I've seen. I hesitate to use the overworked "masterpiece" adjective but this might qualify for that status. To be fair, I've seen only a dozen Flip cartoons to this point but it is hard to imagine one that could be more fun that this one. From start-to-finish, most of this seven-plus-minute cartoon is one wild ride in Flip's new automobile.

Even crazier than the ride across town in the country is the opening scene, where Flip is at a used car lot. He's looking for a good deal. The cars are trying to impress Flip so that he will buy them. One female car, in particular, goes to great lengths to impress Flip, putting on deodorant, battling her eyelashes on the front lights and a lot more. (This zaniness is why I love cartoons.)

Anyway, she and Flip drive happily away. Soon, Flip goes by to pick up his girlfriend, impress her with his new car and then go for a ride with the three of them. (I have to include the car still it is alive and with tons of personality!) That ensuing ride is wild, to say the least. All of sorts of crazy things happen and the car is hilarious, more like a dog than an automobile.

This is very inventive stuff.

Ub Iwerks's Flip the Frog series of cartoons was short-lived, only lasting from 1930 to 1933. On the most part the Flip the Frog cartoons are not great or cartoon/animated masterpieces and it is sort of understandable as to why Flip didn't make it bigger. However they are far from terrible ones either and do hold some interest.

Despite not being historically significant like 'Fiddlesticks' was, 'The New Car' for me is among the best Flip the Frog cartoons alongside up to this point (so in correlation with the previous cartoons) 'The Village Barber', 'Laughing Gas', 'Ragtime Romeo' and particularly 'Cuckoo Murder Case'. It is a good cartoon, it is not perfect but there are things here that improve quite a bit and done much better than many other Flip the Frog cartoons.

A lot of good things in 'The New Car'. The animation is good, with beautifully detailed backgrounds, nice shading and characters that aren't drawn too crudely. The music makes even more of an impact, it is lushly and cleverly orchestrated, full of lively energy and not only adds brilliantly to the action it enhances it.

There are more sight gags than the previous Flip the Frog cartoons, and they are very funny and suitably bizarre, the surrealism of the atmosphere is one of the cartoon's most striking assets. This is easily one of the funniest and wildest cartoon in the series. There is a nice natural charm, a good deal of zest and it does a better job than most Flip the Frog cartoons in not falling into sentimentality or cutesiness, though occasionally there are signs. Really liked the car.

Flip is a bit bland personality-wise though and the car salesman is characterised in a way that jars somewhat with the rest of the cartoon.

Overall though, good and very well done. 8/10 Bethany Cox

This is a most entertaining, almost surreal, cartoon. The visual detail and movement are exceptional and the sight gags are great. The one thing that generally puzzles me about Flip cartoons is why animators had little difficulty giving just about everything else more personality than they were able to give to Flip-the putative star of the shorts! Oh well, such is life-or the lack thereof. It's good to see this is on DVD. The output of the Iwerks studio was usually visually excellent and of sufficient interest to be worth watching. Recommended.