La patrulla tonta

I am surprised to see that Looney Tunes' first and cutest character, Bosko, was sent to war in a couple of his shorts..."Bosko the Doughboy" and "Dumb Patrol" (instead of "Dawn Patrol", a famous WWI aviation film). This is because 20,000,000 folks died in this war...making it a bit of a difficult sell. Perhaps the 13 years since the end of this was why they could now laugh at this topic....though I must admit that there still aren't that many laughs.

Like so many of the Harmon-Ising cartoons, this one lacks the edge that the later Looney Tunes films were famous for bringing to the audiences. Here, instead of jokes, Bosko mostly acts cute. After being shot down by a character who looks a lot like a gorilla merged with Disney's Peg Leg Pete, Bosko discovers a cute French lady (Honey) and they sing and dance. Only later does Bosko take to the air again to rid the cartoon world of the evil beast.

Considering there's less singing and cuteness than most Bosko films, I'm awarding this one a 5...which is actually pretty good for Bosko. Not a great cartoon but a little less saccharine than usual.

Warfare is not going to get Bosko or Honey down, nosiree! The title is a play on the film title Dawn Patrol and Warner Brothers made another short 33 years later with the same title. Both are decent, but they started to flesh out the Bosko character at about this point in the series, so this one is better than most, if a bit inane. Well worth watching. Recommended.

Bosko in his scrappy, anthropomorphic plane and a fearsome beast in his awesome, cannon-hauling machine are in a dogfight, and Bosko loses. His plane is vaporized in mid-air, but Bosko's fall is broken by the keys of a piano. Bombs have destroyed most of the house surrounding the piano, but the instrument itself is undamaged. Bosko meets Honey, a French girl who happens to skip by. His piano playing impresses her, but the fearsome beast interrupts his performance by dropping a bomb on him. This time Bosko uses a dachshund for an airplane by spinning its head around like a propeller. Now, with a homemade machine gun and the pickets from a picket fence for bullets, Bosko can't lose.

"Dumb Patrol" makes excellent use of Bosko's relentlessly cheery disposition by having him whistle and sing merrily as bombs fall all around him. Honey makes an equally hilarious entrance, by skipping among the ruins as if she were enjoying a day at the park.

Bosko's scrappy airplane has something of a personality, which makes the cartoon seem a bit cruel when it allows the villain to destroy it. But that kind of tart humor is necessary to counterbalance Bosko's psychopathic cheeriness.

The Bosko cartoons may not be animation masterpieces, but they are fascinating as examples of Looney Tunes in their early days before the creation of more compelling characters and funnier and more creative cartoons.

'Dumb Patrol' fares considerably better than the previous two at best average Bosko cartoons, and while a long way from a cartoon masterpiece it's somewhere around top middle as far as Bosko cartoons go. The Bosko cartoons are ones where the stories are never a strong suit, and that it would be silly to expect much, even then 'Dumb Patrol' while not plot-less as such is slight and predictable.

Surprisingly 'Dumb Patrol' fares surprisingly well tonally, cheeriness amidst something as heavy and harrowing as war sounds like a recipe for disaster but, apart from occasionally the constant cheeriness going a little overboard to the point of annoyance and the fate of the airplane being a little cruel (considering the airplane was quite compelling as a character), there is a good mix of fun and emotional power.

As to be expected, even in the lesser Bosko cartoons, the animation is not bad at all. Not exactly refined but fluid and crisp enough with some nice detail, it is especially good in the meticulous backgrounds and some remarkably flexible yet natural movements for Bosko. The music doesn't disappoint either, its infectious energy, rousing merriment, lush orchestration and how well it fits with the animation is just a joy.

Bosko's personality appears significantly more fleshed out, before he tended to not be interesting let alone endearing but he is rootable enough here. Honey is neither annoying or bland, and while the villain is stock they also fare well providing the obligatory conflict. Liked the character of the airplane too. The material does quite well finding the right balance of tone, being fun while not necessarily trivialising war.

Overall, decent if not great. 7/10 Bethany Cox