Room Runners

In Leonard Maltin's excellent book "Of Mice and Magic," he expresses disappointment with Ub Iwerks' independent work of the 1930s. All fabulous animation with nil humor or charm.

I love Maltin, but I must disagree, especially in regards to this fine pre-code cartoon, Room Runners (1932), starring Flip the Frog.

This short's pacing and comedy are well in sync with the quality of the animation. The risqué content only makes it more worth seeing, with its plethora of innuendo and seedy gags. Goes to show cartoons were not exclusively a children's domain, even then.

I'd go so far as to call this a mini-masterpiece of early sound cartoons. Do not miss out, guys!

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, enough of them even being good.

Despite not being historically significant like 'Fiddlesticks' was, 'Room Runners' for me is among the best Flip the Frog cartoons, as well as being one of the original and easily the series at its most unexpectedly racy. It is a very 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 'Room Runners'. The animation is very good 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 a good deal of Flip the Frog cartoons, and they are very creative, beautifully timed and for the series quite risqué. Maybe not always hilarious but they are some of the best gags of the series easily. There is a nice natural charm, a good deal of zest and it is certainly among the least sentimental Flip the Frog cartoons, which is a good thing.

Characters are lively. The atmosphere is what sets 'Room Runners' apart from the rest of the series, there is a remarkably racy feel that one doesn't expect at all from a Flip the Frog cartoons or from Iwerks, one is amazed of what the cartoon gets away with. The pacing is never dull.

Flip is a bit bland still though, he never was one of animation's most compelling, most interesting or personality-filled lead characters.

Occasionally, the drawing is slightly erratic.

Otherwise, this is very good and one of Flip's best. 8/10 Bethany Cox

This one was about as good as the Flip the Frog series got, with this one actually having a plot of sufficient depth to support a cartoon, good music by Carl W. Stallings and some very good gags (though this cartoon, from the pre-Code era, is most definitely not for kids!) that mostly work within the plot. There's a running gag with a gent trying to pull a bad tooth that ends perfectly! One of the better shorts in a mixed and decidedly uneven series. As is typical for almost everything Ub Iwerks did, this is technically superb and holds up on that score even 71 years later. Recommended.

This was a pretty racy cartoon, full of women in the state of undress and scantily-clad.....but who's complaining? As in a few Betty Boop cartoons, and probably a few others I am unaware of, you could do this prior to 1934.

Flip is trying to sneak out of the "Grand Slam Hotel" without paying his bill. Along the way, he runs into several naked women, is chased by the landlady and a cop and all kind of crazy sight gags are offered along the way.

To give you an example of the sex angle of the story, Flip and the cop stop their chase for a minute to take turns peeking through a keyhole in the hotel at a naked woman drying herself with a towel. There's a lot of that sort of thing in this slapstick-mad cartoon which is so entertaining it's over before you know it.

If you're a fan of classic animation, I strongly recommend "Cartoons that Time Forgot, the Ub Iwerks Collection Vol. 2". But beware, these cartoons are not for kids! "Room Runners", one of my favorites in the collection, features a broke Flip the Frog trying to skip out on his hotel bill. When you see Flip, at one point utter "Damn!", you realize that these cartoons were made in a time before ratings committees, and political correctness. Equally surprising, especially to those of us who are used to the cartoons we saw as kids, is Iwerks' frequent use of women in sexually suggestive ways, like at one point, when Flip peers through a keyhole and catches a nude woman drying off, as seen from behind, covered only barely by a towel deftly swishing back and forth across her rear.

Another feature of Iwerks' work is the use of music, and timing most of the action in his cartoons to the beat of the music. And this, in a time when animation was still fairly new, and sound on film was even newer!