Happy Go Luckies

Happy Go Luckies (1923)

*** (out of 4)

This seven-minute animated film from Paul Terry has a few weak spots but for the most part its full of laughs and certainly plenty of imagination. The film starts off as a dog and cat decide to jump on a train for a simple ride but this turns out not to be the case and they wind up in a small town where they both enter a dog contest so that they can win some money. Terry has over one-thousand producing credits and nearly one-hundred and fifty directing credits to his name but I'm not overly familiar with his work. This short certainly made me want to try and locate some others because I was really impressed with not only the animation but all the imagination that went into it. One of the highlights in the film has the train trying to go over a step mountain but it's parts only going over one at a time. Just check out all the detail as one box car goes over at a time while the rest are slowly catching up to the front. The comedy really comes into play at the end once we get to the contest and the dog and cat must work together to make it appear that they're both one long dog. The effect is quite funny and the pay-off is rather hilarious even though you see it coming from a mile away. The animation style was extremely good and I especially liked the small details that were in nearly every frame of the picture.

The cat and the dog are out riding the rails when they encounter some trains out having a good time.

This early Paul Terry-Aesop's Fables cartoon is a fairly good effort, albeit the version I saw ran a bit short. The cars in the train are given a bit of action and personality.

The whole effort is bolstered immeasurably by the lively score of Michael Mortilla, best known for his work on the CHAPLIN AT MUTUAL DVD. It's jazzy score with some nice sound effects attached and if you like, you can see it on his website at http://www.midilifecrisis.com/HTML/NFPF_Frameset.html.

In the late 30s and 1940s, Paul Terry produced a ton of cartoons--most of which were pretty awful. With the likes of Heckle & Jeckle and Mighty Mouse among his BEST offerings at the time, it's no wonder you practically never see any of these films any more on TV--though they were unfortunately pretty commonly shown on television when I was a kid. Because of these shorts, I have always disliked Terry's work and assumed all of his stuff was like this. Fortunately, however, when Turner Classic Movies recently showed "Happy Go Luckies" I didn't turn off the cartoon immediately after seeing Terry's name on the title card.

Unlike his later work, "Happy Go Luckies" is funny and very imaginative. While the animation is only fair (about the quality you'd see in a Felix the Cat cartoon), the story was wacky and imaginative--with a cat and his friend a dog having some insane adventures which began on a really odd train. The bottom line is that this one is pretty good and I'll try to look for some of Terry's older films, as this one was about on-par with the average cartoon of the time.