Magoo's Puddle Jumper

This short, produced by UPA in 1956, won an Oscar, beating out two other UPA productions to do so. UPA used very limited animation and compensated for the limitations in movement with good scripts, careful selection of voices and by making the best use of animation by making it count. The premise of this short is so outlandish, it will remain in your memory for a long while afterwards. The title is a bit of a pun, actually. Most Recommended.

I am sure I will ruffle a few feathers, but here is my rant about MAGOO'S PUDDLE JUMPER. This film received the Academy Award for 1957 in the category of Best Animated Short. It was a great year for producer Stephen Bosustow from UPA, as his studio received the only three nominations that year. So, if Magoo didn't win, Gerald McBoing-Boing or one of the studios other "quality products" would win.

So this brings me to the important question: "Was the Academy out of its mind?!". In short, the answer is 'yes'. They had to be, as the UPA films were great examples of very, very cheap animation--with low cel counts, terrible backgrounds (made simple for one reason alone--economy) and characters who weren't fit to be on the same screen as the Looney Tunes or Disney products of the day. Surely Magoo and Gerald McBoing-Boing are NOT in the same league as Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck or Goofy!! What were they thinking?!? And before you think I am just a crank, understand that films like BARBARY-COAST BUNNY, A STAR IS BORED and GREEDY FOR TWEETY (all from Looney Tunes in 1956) didn't even get nominated--nor did HOOKED BEAR (Disney).

As for this Magoo film, the animation quality is abysmal and the story about a legally blind man driving about town and into the ocean is just sad...sad because it is so bad. The only positive is Jim Backus' voice talents--they were pretty clever.

"Magoo" goes to an used car lot and is promptly fleeced by the owner as he's sold an "electric" jalopy that he struggles to get out of reverse! Meantime, "Waldo" is petrified in the back seat - luckily with an hat stuck over his head. Next, well there's an encounter with the fishes and some ancient Spanish galleons loom into view, some sharks, seaweed... As "Magoo" extols the virtues of his perfect vista, a seal tries to get past and that leads our intrepid traveller to unwisely open the door! Sadly, that doesn't quite end the story as landward again he attracts the attention of the police and at least then we get a brief laugh. I never really got the humour of this myopic character and his contrived scenarios and this one didn't really change that opinion. The standard of animation is adequate and though the storyline here does allow for them to run a bit riot with an whole gamut of flora and fauna, it's still nothing special, sorry.

Columbia Pictures from the mid-30s began to produce animation, many of these cartoons were interesting or at least entertaining, in the late 40s the Company threw all the concepts of Animation in the Trash and began to launch cartoons with little attention to the detail, lousy backgrounds and animation and simplistic and horrendous character designs, Unfortunately this type of limited animation led to the creation of one of the characters that I least understand his success, Mr Magoo, a bitter and rich blind old man who had adventures of everything less fun, for some reason the Academy decided to Forget the Big Animation Producers like Disney, Universal, MGM and Warner Brothers to Reward and Nominate these Audiovisual Garbage, this shows that the Academy did not nominate stupid things recently, they have always nominated aberrations to the Oscars!.

This is a clear Example on how NOT to make a cartoon, we see the Arrogant Mr Magoo being scammed by a Car Dealer of dubious Quality and instead of paying attention to his nephew he falls into the Trap and uses an obsolete gadget that does not make him more than cause a lot of Boring Situations and without a bit of sense.

The Animation is Even Worse than the Disastrous Tom and Jerry Cartoons produced in Czechoslovakia in the early 60's, It's too Simplistic, Horrendous and Ugly that it made my Eyes Water, the colors are Ugly, Static and Mediocre and they look terrible on the environment, the Animation is too Limited, it almost seems that they produced it with 5 Dollars, the movements are Pale and there is almost no movement, it has very Few Frames and it shows that they did not put any effort at all!.

Luckily the Great Dean Elliot (who would later work with Chuck Jones at MGM) offers an Acceptable music, it is certainly not very good, but it is superior to the terrible Animation that this cartoon has.

I hate the voice acting in this cartoon, it's Low Quality and Poor Daws Butler couldn't even act well due to the Low Budget of this Hogwash, I find Magoo's Voice Irritating, his Screams and moans are unbearable and they do nothing but my ears bleed!.

This is complete hogwash, complete disgust that damages the name of Columbia Pictures and especially that of the Oscars, the person who decided that MGM, Warner Bros and Disney were more of the bunch and chose this crap as the winner of the oscar should have been under the influence of drugs really, I don't like the horrendous animation that this cartoon has, in fact, "When Magoo's Flew" from 1953 is even better cartoon than this, but really that's not saying much since it's also an abomination.

In itself, This is an Oscar winning Bad Cartoon, I did not think that the Academy was so stupid to Nominate and Even give the Award to this mediocre Cartoon!, honestly I prefer a thousand times to see the Scary Tom and Jerry Cartoons produced by Filmation in the middle of the 80s, that this crap without grace and meaning.

Revisiting the Mr. Magoo character as part of my ongoing Oscar season, I cannot help but marvel at how such an obviously politically incorrect figure was ever not only conceived and executed but accepted so wholeheartedly by both critics and the public at large as to make him a multiple Academy Award winner and an animation icon! This Oscar-winning short sees the near-sighted perennial optimist catching up with the times and purchasing an electric car; accompanied by his hick nephew, he naturally falls foul of a traffic cop and escapes his pursuit by running his car off a bridge into the sea – all the while mistaking the specimen of marine life he encounters as the newest model in various rival (and inferior) automobile brands! Incidentally, the other two cartoon shorts competing against it at the Oscars also emanated from Columbia, including GERALD McBOING! BOING! ON PLANET MOO.