The Pups' Christmas

"The Pups' Christmas" is one of those animated Christmas shorts that is low on humor, depending on cuteness to sustain it. The story concerns a bunch of kids and their puppies who sneak downstairs on Christmas Eve to see what Santa brought them. About midway through, it seems that the film makers couldn't decide whether to do a Christmas film with puppies or a toys come alive story. Both elements are used and neither works. A sequence involving an out of control toy tank shows promise, but it quickly fizzles out yet refuses to go away. The quality of the animation is about average. All around a pretty boring short.

It's MGM with puppies, so you can be pretty sure of saccharine cuteness throughout-- and yet this rather unfocused piece turns uneasily dark... Two realistic small boys and their sister come downstairs on Christmas Eve to see what Santa's brought, followed by Black Pup and Brown Pup. Santa seems to have brought enough to stock an entire toy store and half a pet store as well! The pups react quite naturally when encountering all these new objects, and I thought Black Pup's bristling at a large stuffed dog particularly amusing in a mild way. The little girl exclaims over the new doll that says 'Mama', while the boys wind up a train, ride a trike, and then --fatefully-- wind up a toy tank, which brings it to conscious and malevolent life. At this point the cartoon seems to have been taken over by someone new; the children disappear, presumably having returned to bed, and leaving the pups in possession of the field. Brown Pup is discovered to have dismembered the 'Mama' doll, and manages to swallow the 'Mama' device, with consequent schtick. The vicious toy tank pursues and attacks anything that moves, murdering two other live toys-- where will it all end?

A very traditional cartoon for it's time, and in that context it no doubt delighted the theater patrons who saw it on the big screen during the 1936 Christmas season.

I can understand how people who are into "The Simpson's", and/or other contemporary animation, might be easily bored, but the tiresome habit of constantly trying to measure the art and entertainment of a bygone era to today's commonplace output is specious and moot.

True, in it's own day, "The Pups' Christmas" does not have the type of high humor one might see in the great Porky Pig cartoons turned out by Warners, nor does it have the multi-faceted cleverness of Max Fleischer's 1930's Popeye & Betty Boop cartoons. However, it IS a beautifully animated piece, and it captures the mood of Christmas quite nicely.

Recommeded.

Two puppies explore the house in the aftermath of gift-giving on Christmas in this Harman-Ising cartoon.

I have a great deal of trouble with the MGM cartoons of these two animators. They're usually highly moral fables about how you should always listen to mama, and the cuteness factor is amped up so high, I can't take it. My taste is for jokes and a lot of sarcasm, so I greatly prefer Warner Brothers cartoons from about 1937 through 1960, pre-Code Fleischer cartons, and Tex Avery cartoons. Here it's all cuteness, and that doesn't entertain me much.

Nonetheless, there's no arguing with the technical excellence of this cartoon, with its fine background art, excellent color design. And Scott Brady's spot-on score, quoting amiably from well-known songs to make its point. If you're looking for cuteness, how can you do better than a couple of flop-eared puppies? So it certainly succeeds in doing what it sets out to, even if it makes me think I should see about getting a prescription for insulin.

Slight but cute Christmas cartoon from Harman-Isling. This is about a couple of puppies who follow the kids down to open presents on Christmas morning. It's basically a series of bits where the pups are frightened by each of the toys and generally make a mess. These kids must have been from a rich family because that's a lot of presents, especially for 1936. Anyway, it's treacly stuff but pleasant and innocent. I would assume it was aimed at pre-schoolers. I'm not sure about the movie-going habits of the 1930s and if people took kids that little to the movies or not. But I can't imagine this was aimed at older kids.