Room Runners

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.

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!

Room Runners (1932)

*** (out of 4)

Flip the Frog is broke and can't pay his hotel tab so he decides to try and sneak out during the night but this plan doesn't work and soon he has a cop and the hotel manager after him.

Here's another winning short from director Ub Iwerks who once again brings some great animation and mixes it with a pretty funny story. This is a rather risqué short so it's obviously not for children but some of the best moments come from the Pre-Code humor. This includes several scenes where Flip "accidentally" sees some naked women and another sequence where he and the cop spy on a woman just getting out of the shower. The film manages to be very entertaining due to its dark comic tone and is a real winner.

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!

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.