Betty Boop's Museum

This is a fairly unexceptional Betty Boop cartoon. The animation is clever as always, but the main attractions are only Betty and a museum full of living skeletons. This makes for some cute scenarios, such as a dinosaur using his own ribs to play catch, but Betty's song is mediocre and the cartoon is overall unsatisfying and anti-climactic.

This short begins with Ko Ko the Clown taking Betty Boop to the museum. There she wanders about--not realizing that the place is closing. Once she realizes it, the place is locked and she begins singing a song about how depressed she is--and the various odd looking skeletons really enjoy the cartoon. Eventually, Bimbo the Dog comes to get Betty and the skeletons all bury themselves.

As you can probably tell from my description there isn't a lot of plot here--even for a cartoon. You can also probably tell that the film is ultra-strange. I see it as a turn off your brain and enjoy sort of carton--one you cannot think about or else you'll soon realize that there really isn't much to this of substance...sort of like the skeletons.

This short is nothing terribly unusual for a Betty Boop from the early 1930s-not the best they did, but enjoyable. The main problem with this short is that it pales in the almost guaranteed comparisons to The Skeleton Dance, a Disney short that is one of the best animated shorts of all time. Interestingly enough, the best part of the cartoon is the beginning, when Koko is taking Betty to the museum. There are a few cute bits after that, but the sequences in the museum vary quite a bit in quality. Cute ending, though. Well worth watching. In print and available. Recommended.

Fleischer were responsible for some brilliant cartoons, some of them still among my favourites. Their visual style often stunning and some of the most imaginative and ahead of its time in animation.

The character of Betty Boop, one of their most famous and prolific characters, may not be for all tastes and sadly not as popular now, but her sex appeal was quite daring for the time and to me there is an adorable sensual charm about her. The charm, sensuality and adorability factors are here and she's fun to watch. Koko has a bigger role to usual and is very amusing, and those skeletons are creepy.

Furthermore, the black and white animation is very good, smooth, meticulously detailed and well drawn with the black and white not looking too primitive. A lot of it is actually very imaginative and impressively surreal, and the skeletons are very well designed. Even better is much the music, which is rousing, catchy and unquestionably accessible to anybody who loves or is familiar with the compositional style.

'Betty Boop's Museum' is variable in terms of effectiveness of scenes, but there is a nice creepiness and a nice sense of fun. The beginning, Betty's mad dash and the cute bit with the dinosaur are the highlights. The voice acting is good.

It is a plot-less cartoon though and does feel stretched sometimes, 'The Skeleton Dance', a masterpiece and an infinitely superior cartoon, it isn't. Betty's depression song is agreed mediocre at best, really not one of her better songs, and the ending is rather anti-climactic.

On the whole, a good Betty Boop cartoon but not one of the better ones