Wolf! Wolf!

This is a minor variation on the story of the Boy Who Cred Wolf as Oswald the Lucky Rabbit tends a couple of lambs who tease him by crying 'Wolf! Wolf! until the real article shows up.

There's not too much to this Oswald cartoon, which is aimed squarely at small children. There is a shortage of gags peppering this one, and only one tickled my funny bone: notice how the wolf shuts his door. The rest of it is high-pitched voices and a wolf that looks like it was modeled on Disney's THE THREE LITTLE PIGS.

Oswald had suffered in the years since Disney invented him. During this period he was pretty much a utility character and this would result, in a few years, in his disappearance from the screen, to be replaced by more high-energy characters like Woody Woodpecker.

Walt Disney and his employee, Ub Iwerks, made a delightful character when they were working for Universal Studios. Oswald the Lucky Rabbit was very mischievous and the cartoons very anarchic. However, the studio got greedy and even though the cartoons were a bit hit, they offered Disney a HUGE price DECREASE for each cartoon. Naturally this made him quit...something Universal wanted as they owned the rights to Oswald and were planning on making their own Oswald cartoons instead of farming them out to Disney...a HUGE mistake. The subsequent Oswald films were directed by Walter Lantz and as the years passed, the quality of the films got worse and worse until eventually the character was put to sleep!

This is one of the later Oswald shorts and as such it's an abomination to even call this character Oswald. Instead of being a bit of a lovable jerk, the newer cartoons emphasized cutesy characters and a redesigned Oswald. On one hand, the cartoons DID look better...but they also were about as much fun as brain surgery! This one certainly is NOT fun and features too much of what killed the franchise...cute music and cute characters (yech!). It also features a moral lesson...something you DON'T want from Oswald...you just want fun and chaos! A dreadful retelling of "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" featuring two hellishly awful lambs...how I just wish that wolf had eaten them...as well as Oswald!!

The story is obviously a remake of The Boy Who Cried Wolf, a tale attributed to Aesop. But instead of a boy who makes false alarms, it's a pair of sheep. Oswald tells them if they see a wolf, all they have to do is call. However, they would call out just for fun even when nothing is going wrong. They do so, twice.

In one of his few attempts to spice up the character he won in a poker game, Lantz created this musical film which is a rarity in the series. The catchy music in the film is the work of James Dietrich who has been providing sound to the cartoons since 1931. Also, some cuteness and decent humor really make up the score.

Despite Oswald the Lucky Rabbit and his cartoons being popular and well received at the time, they have been vastly overshadowed over time by succeeding animation characters. It is a shame as, while not cartoon masterpieces, they are fascinating for anybody wanting to see what very old animation looked like.

Oswald in the Disney years saw mostly good to very good cartoons, and while the Winkler years had some duds there were also cartoons as good as the best of the Disney years. The 1929-1930 batches of Walter Lantz-directed Oswald cartoons were a mixed bag, with some good, some forgettable and not much special and a few mediocre. The 1931 batch was mostly underwhelming, with only 6 out of 18 cartoons being above average or more. The 1932 batch had a few not so good, though the cartoons in question were nothing compared to the worst of the previous 3 years, cartoons, but most were decent to good and some even very good. The 1933 batch is one of the most consistent, with the weakest 'Beau Best' still being decent.

Where there are certainly much better Oswald cartoons, to me 'Wolf! Wolf!' isn't that bad, even if it doesn't bring much new to a fable that everybody knows and often seen and heard whether in real life, culture or in any kind of visual media. 'Wolf! Wolf!' is thin on plot and could have had more laughs and been less cutesy, those lambs were not as endearing as they should have been with the cartoon trying too hard in places to make them cure.

However, the animation is very good. There is the looser and more elaborate look of many of the previous Lantz era Oswald cartoons, but it was surprising and lovely to see parts of the animation reminding one of the animation style of the Disney years in places.

Love the music too, which is very characterful and beautifully orchestrated and performed.

What there is of the humour is decently timed and fairly amusing and some parts are genuinely sweet. though compared to previous Oswald cartoons this was very restrained stuff and you miss the chaos. Although Oswald is likable it is the wolf who's the best character and the character you actually root for.

In conclusion, could have been better but not bad. 7/10 Bethany Cox