Forest Fantasy

The sun sets, and pulls the shades down after him. An owl conducts the wood's denizens in a version of Felix Arndt's "Nola",. Then the bouncing ball appears and leads the audience in a sing-along of "By the Light of the Silvery Moon."

I'm very fond of "Nola", but an instrumental piece like that is not usually the subject of the Screen Songs, initiated by the Fleischers' in 1924, and revived by their successor, Famous Studios in the late 1940s. "By the Light of the Silvery Moon" was written by Edward Madden, with music by Gus Kahn and introduced in the Ziegfeld Follies in 1909. It was a standard, and has been covered extensively in albums, including Joanna Dong as recently as 2018.

A very pleasant little cartoon.

While it was an inconsistent series, the Kartunes series from Famous Studios made in the early 1950s was still worth watching. Some of the cartoons were not great, with the first half generally being better than the second (something that was very obvious in the cartoons between 'Snooze Reel' and this), but the weakest ones still managed to not be misfires (unlike the better known Screen Song cartoons) and the best surprisingly very good, like for example the first 'Vegetable Vaudeville'.

Even though not an innovative idea by any stretch of the imagination, the idea for 'Forest Fantasy' with a night time setting was still a good one. It was a very cute and charming cartoon that is a lot funnier and a lot less sentimental than it sounds. For me, 'Forest Fantasy' is one of the best cartoons in the Kartunes series, the best since 'Snooze Reel' and a much needed step in the right direction after a quality slump with the previous three cartoons.

The singalong portion is where 'Forest Fantasy' is at its weakest, which was not a surprise as that was common for the Kartunes series. The second half is not as good as the first, it's made up of the singalong and while the song itself is a lot of fun and a deserved popular standard the singalong material wise felt too cutesy and was in serious need of variety.

As to be expected, the plot is non existent and a series of gags of the blackout kind. When it comes to the originality, 'Forest Fantasy' is fairly hit and miss, a couple being fairly typical and easy to predict.

However, a lot about 'Forest Fantasy' is good. It is beautifully animated. The colours are vibrant and there is meticulous attention to detail in the backgrounds. If there was one aspect that was consistently good in Famous Studios' 1940s and 1950s output, it was the music scoring. And it is outstanding here. The orchestration has a lot of energy and there are some truly luscious sounds throughout.

Furthermore, enough of the gags are visually inventive, full of energy and don't come over as cutesy. It is on the corny side at times, but the gags are also plentiful and to me they were very amusing on the whole. A beautiful job is done with the night setting, especially visually and the characters are cute with a good deal of personality. Pacing is fine, with a lively first half.

In conclusion, very nice cartoon. 7/10.