¡Ay, Qué Rana!

Everyone knows what happens in the excellent animated masterpiece. A guy finds a dancing, singing frog whom will only dance or sing for him and it drives him crazy. This is the best Chuck Jones short ever (no easy feat), and will be with else to entertain countless generations of the young and young at heart. Many attempts to duplicate this has but done throughout the intervening years, but accept no substitutes. This is fantastic stuff. This animated short can be seen on Disc 4 of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume 2. It features a commentary by Micheal Barrier, as well as an optional music only track.

My Grade:A+

"Greed" is one of the great American classics, but so often we limit ourselves to thinking of a film as a multi-hour feature film with live actors. In "One Froggy Evening" Chuck Jones tells the story of a construction worker demolishing a building and discovers a frog in the cornerstone. A SINGING FROG. Naturally, the first impulse is to make money on the frog. The only problem, the frog will only sing for this one guy. Not paying crowds, not talent agents, ONLY HIM. Slowly he is driven mad, not so much by the frog but by his own failed plans with the frog. Failing to recognize the special gift he has, he sees the building going up and sticks the frog back into the cornerstone. Years pass, and when the laser demolition-man is vaporizing the building with his 21st century technology, what does he find? A SINGING FROG. "You know," he thinks, "I could make some money." And so the cycle continues. People of any time are the same, they never learn. There's your moral. Chuck Jones does in 7 minutes what Von Stroheim took 7 hours to do. A genuine masterpiece of animation.

The last two times I saw One Froggy Evening it was in a censored version. In the original, the guy rents a theatre to show the singing frog and peppers the building with posters but no-one comes. He puts out a "free admission" sign but still no-one comes. He then puts out a "free beer" sign and is trampled by the crowd that rushes in. In the censored version, the "free beer" sign is cut. This is not only a stupid thing to do in itself; it also makes no sense since there is no reason why crowds would rush in so enthusiastically to see the singing frog if the only attraction was free admission. The whole point is that no-one believes in the singing frog. Who has committed this stupid act of vandalism and why -- and can we do anything about it?

You know, I would virtually tell everyone to watch EVERY short that Chuck Jones and Michael Maltese collaborated on. They are icons in creating some of the best storytelling animation in our time. EVERYONE looking to get into screen writing or story board writing should study their storytelling. But the two most important ones, the first ones that everyone should watch when beginning their curiosity should be Feed the Kitty, which inspired Joe Dante and Chris Columbus, and this short, One Froggy Evening, which influenced Steven Spielberg.

A laborer at a demolition site discovers a frog that can sing and dance. Seeing a world of opportunity, he leaves, and gets more than he ever bargained for.

There are too many elements in this short to count. But it's great. The frog doesn't even need to sing for you to appreciate the hilarity of it all. But if you do listen to the frog, I guarantee you at one point in your life you will sing that song in your head. When people at my work ask me to try to tune out some song in their head, I pop out, "Hello My Baby," or, "Michigan Rag." They end up having one of those songs permanently stuck in their head. Try it! You'll go through work faster and have a good memory stuck in your head. And if you haven't watched this cartoon, I suggest you find it. Now.

I really enjoyed this cartoon. Interesting that Michigan J. would only sing in front of the man who found him and no one else. His songs were great too, especially "McClosky Fight" and "Michigan Rag." Overall, I really like that character. It is a shame that he wasn't in more cartoons, but it's fortunate that the WB kept him around as the network's mascot:

"Watch the frog."