Moonlight for Two

And therefore nothing is really funny. That's my take on it and you may certainly disagree, but this is the principal reason why Harman-Ising Merrie Melodies are not particularly funny -- nor are the versions of popular songs offered here particularly good, given the squeaky-voiced vocal artists offered for your entertainment here.

A great deal of the fun in the Termite Terrace era of animation is not simply that anything can happen, but that you, the audience, knew what was going to happen to poor Daffy Duck when he tried to swindle Bugs. Even the Cartoon Laws of Physics -- such as the best known one, about gravity: gravity will not work upon an object until the object recognizes it is going to fall -- make a rough psychological sense, once you're in on the gag.

Here, alas, the best jokes are poor celebrity caricatures: Rudy Vallee shows up, although he looks more like Harpo Marx to my eyes.

The early films by Looney Tunes were vastly different in style from their more familiar output from the 1940s and 50s. While the 40s and 50s brought sarcastic characters and good old fashioned violence (yay, violence!), the early ones were much more cutesy and very often relied on singing. Most of them, in my biased opinion, are pretty hard to take and the cuter they were and more singing in them, the worse they generally were to watch. This style can be attributed to two things. First, singing and cute cartoons were often produced by other studios...though Looney Tunes seemed to take it to an extreme. Second, the direction team of Harmon-Ising just LOVED this type of cartoon...and when they left to go to MGM, the quality and enjoyability of the Looney Tunes films improved considerably.

"Moonlight for Two" is one of these singing cutesy cartoons, though it was less cute than most...which made it easier to watch. But hearing the girl in the short (who looked like Bosco's girlfriend, though Bosco was notably absent) sing...uggh...it was just awful. And, this wasn't the only singing portion....and which is why despite it being well animated and well made, I simply didn't enjoy it. The hero is Goopy Geer, a character the studio wanted to groom for stardom but who soon disappeared...something VERY common in early Looney Tunes films. They had a real difficulty coming up with likable and familiar characters for quite a few years...and insipid plots and singing sure didn't help them.

Moonlight for Two is a Merrie Melodies cartoon from Hugh Harmon-Rudolf Ising Productions in association with Leon Schlesinger and distributed by Warner Bros. In this one, a hillbilly dog couple come to a dance while singing the title song. Many hilarious gags involving hillbilly stereotypes like the one of the sock still dancing while the musician takes it off his foot! My favorite ones involve a dancing stove who later saves the hero's life when a shotgun-shootin' bear disrupts the dance. Loved the hero using the stove to shoot the bear back! Highly amusing and well worth seeing for any animation fan of early Warner Bros. So long, folks!

'Moonlight for Two' (1932)

Opening thoughts: It is always interesting to see Warner Brothers Merrie Melodies cartoons featuring characters that are not the classic ones we know and love and are iconic in animation history. There are some good or more efforts, if also some average or less ones (with some of the cartoons of the very early lead characters, like Bosko and Buddy, being not much more than historical interest).

There are however far better examples of early Warner Brothers Merrie Melodies cartoons than the watchable but bland 'Moonlight for Two'. It has good things but is easily forgettable after a couple of hours on the most part, especially if you have already seen other cartoons of this type and there is plenty of them. A delight visually and aurally, other than that 'Moonlight for Two' doesn't have an awful lot else to offer. Pretty much what was expected in my view considering the premise.

Good things: 'Moonlight for Two' looks good visually if not exactly imaginative. It's meticulously detailed and crisp and smooth. The title song is perky and the rest of the music is catchy, lush, rousing and cleverly synchronised. To me it was beautifully performed and personally have never had a problem with the style of music and singing, while understanding why others will not care for it.

Second half picks up in the pace and has a couple of mildly amusing music-oriented gags and fun support.

Bad things: However, the lead character and his sweetheart are bland and lack personality. There is not much funny in 'Moonlight for Two' apart from a few moments in the second half.

Nor is there enough energy (the first half is far too cloyingly cutesy for my taste), consistent gags or a story with much memorability or momentum. The story is not much of one at all in fact.

Closing thoughts: Overall, watchable but doesn't have much to offer.

5/10.