The Calico Dragon

THE CALICO DRAGON is truly a beautiful, enjoyable cartoon tale about a little girls stuffed animals coming to life in her dreams and looking for adventure. The calico dragons and their song are engrained in mine and my friends minds and having seen "Calico" on CartoonNetwork last year, it still holds up. I only wish it was available on video along with some of the other MGM classic cartoons, or that CN would have a regular MGM Classic hour!

Love animation, it was a big part of my life as a child, particularly Disney, Looney Tunes, Hanna Barbera, Studio Ghibli and Tom and Jerry, and still love it whether it's film, television or cartoons. With significantly broader knowledge of different directors, animation styles and studios, actually appreciate and love it even more now.

'The Calico Dragon' is fairly typical of Rudolf Ising, leaning towards the cute kind of cartoon with a lot of sentiment in alternative to the laugh a minute and hilarious kind, the latter being the one that a lot seem to prefer (understandably, though am hardly biased against the former). This approach has varied with Ising. In some instances it has been very sweet and charming, in others it can be cloying and too cutesy. Generally 'The Calico Dragon' belongs in the former category, despite the danger of falling into the latter with the premise.

'The Calico Dragon' has a lot to like and far from undeserving of a nomination and deserving of more attention.

Yes it gets a bit too saccharine in places, like with the lyrics of the narration, and it is best perhaps to not talk about the story because there really isn't much of one.

What 'The Calico Dragon' does so well however eclipses these problems. The animation is rich in detail for design and backgrounds, vibrant in colour and crisp. Composer for the prime-era 'Tom and Jerry' cartoons and regular Tex Avery composer Scott Bradley provides a lush and atmospheric music score.

It is hard not to fall in love with the irresistibly adorable dragon, and it has enough likeability and personality to not be dull. 'The Calico Dragon' is rich in natural sweet charm and some very imaginative ideas and visuals. There is not much hilarious and the cartoon's hardly laugh a minute, but a good deal of it does raise a smile. The pace avoids being draggy.

Overall, lovely cartoon. 8/10 Bethany Cox

A little girl reads the fairy tale story, The Princess and the Dragon, to her dolls. She falls asleep. In her dream, her dolls come alive. A doll rides a horse to battle the dragon with a little dog in tow.

It's Happy Harmonies from MGM. It's a Hugh Harman - Rudolf Ising cartoon. It's an old-style animated cartoon. It's colorful but dull looking. It's the age of the animation. It's not one that I particularly like. The little girl is a bit problematic. She has the fake doll look. I do like the concept of these stuffed animals coming alive. It's a good short. They just need to make a better girl.

A little girl -- I should write "widdle gir-rl" because that's how she would say it -- reads the end of a story, then goes to sleep. Whereupon all toys come to life and do cute things while singers sing cute songs.

Whoopee. Clearly this was the effect that Harman and Ising were trying for -- cuteness, I mean. They certainly do a fine job of color design with their two-strip Technicolor effects, where everything looks like calico, cheap decorated cotton fabric. It got that name because it used to be imported for Calcutta in Indian.

Anyway, if you have a taste for this sort of thing, or need a good purgative, this is a cartoon for you.

So, my appreciation and enjoyment of this lovely short animation is mainly due to the ingenious quilt-world design that is featured throughout, I found it so different and cute and charming. I mostly found the beginning part of it with the weird doll-faced girl reading just a little on the dull side, but things definitely perk up toward the ending as the cuddliest dragon ever shows up, I found him very interesting to look at and way too cuddly to be scary! The form of the dragon reminded me a little of that old stop-motion animated show Bagpuss, and that thing the dragon did with its tongue was so startling with the creepy noise of one of those funny paper birthday party whistle thingies! That foul lil' noise actually gave me a tiny chill and I'm supposed to be a grownup! Something that I found pretty amazing and enchanting about the ending was how the landscape and everything subtly changed back into the little girl's bed covers and toys, revealing everything to be the classic "just a dream" twist in the tale, I actually thought it was remarkably similar to what it's really like when you awaken from a dream as a child. I have never really come across another animation quite like this. Many of the best cartoons I've ever seen were made in the 1930s, and while I grant you that a lot of them weren't perfect, but the ones that really counted were pure animated magic! True animation art, and they are still 😊