Yes! We Have No Bananas

Yes! We Have No Bananas (1930)

*** (out of 4)

The Fleischer Studio produced a number of these animated short films where the "bouncing ball" would have audience members singing together. The story centers on a couple mice who are skating around when they run into someone not too happy to see them. If you're familiar with this series then you know that the animated piece is usually just something small and rather plot less. It's only there to get us to the song but I must say that the animation here is among the best I've seen from the series. The mice characters were actually a lot of fun as was the animation showing them morphing into one another or switching places. These scenes certainly helped make this one of the more memorable from the series and the song itself was good and catchy.

A couple of very skinny rats steal some bananas from a costermonger. He pursues them and extracts some revenge, which leads into the title tune of this Fleischer Screen Song.

Although all of the Fleischer Brothers cartoons were nominally directed by brother Dave, the animation of the screen songs in this period are very different from their animation in the 1920s. Most of their Ko-Ko cartoons were rotoscoped -- Max held the patent on the process and Dave was the original body model for Ko-Ko. This screen song, however, makes much more extension use of the 'rubber tube' style of animation that flourished from about 1925-1935. Notice the way the rats swell up as they eat the bananas, and the way the costermonger uses one of them as a handball.

After years of Favoriting this Max and Dave Fleischer Screen Song Cartoon on YouTube, I finally just watched it now. It depicts two human-sized mice skating down the city streets before encountering a dog-faced fruit vendor. While the vendor is cleaning some apples and bananas, those mice manage to steal some of the latter before the vendor notices and chases them. Some rubber-hose gags abound before the bouncing ball comes on screen to jump on the title song's lyrics for the theatrical audience to sing along to. As that tune nears the end, the ball is replaced by some drawn characters also jumping on those words to amusing effect. Then one final gag is presented before the short ends. That's all there usually was to these sing-a-long cartoons which lasted from this early period to about the early '60s when the Fleischer Studio transitioned to Famous Studios. So on that note, I say give Yes! We Have No Bananas a look if you're an animation buff like me.