Lights Fantastic

Sort of an updated version of "Billboard Frolics", Friz Freleng's eye-popping "Lights Fantastic" depicts a bunch of billboards - apparently around Times Square - putting on various skits. This cartoon really shows off Freleng's penchant for synchronizing music and action (especially with the conga beat). Freleng also made ample use of this in "Pigs in a Polka" and "Show Biz Bugs".

Mostly this was a place holder in 1942. By that point, Bugs Bunny was the undisputed Warner Bros. cartoon star, Chuck Jones had totally eschewed cuteness in favor of slapstick, and the United States' entry into WWII prompted a series of cartoons portraying the characters battling Nazis. But this was certainly a good place holder. Very similar to "Billboard Frolics", true, but I recommend it.

A mix of real-life footage of New York and cartoon footage of the typical 1940s advertising signs coming to life, Lights Fantastic is a classic cartoon.

From such great gags such as the free eye test ("if you can read this, you are Chinese"), to the Chinatown bus carried by rickshaw boys, to the Egyptian Cigarettes picture of one Egyptian giving another a hotfoot, this is pure fun.

Plus, it's classic Freling.

I was extremely amused by Lights Fantastic. Some of the plays on words were quite hilarious, like the Face and Sunburn Coffee (with the coffee cans doing the can-can), take-off on Chase and Sanborn. So was the typewriter sign used to advertise an upcoming movie, called Understood Typewriters (play on Underwood), which typed first "It's Sensational", then "it's Colossal", then trying to type "It's Stupendous" but first typing "It's Stupa", crossing out the typo, trying again with "It's Stoop", crossing that off also. (I thought it was going to be "It's Stoopid"! THAT makes little sense as how can a movie that is sensational and colossal also be DUMB?). The last line was "It's Swell!" The cartoon ended with a Win-a-Car conga line, opened up with tapping of Stucco House Coffee (Play on Maxwell House), shaking by peanut and jangling of cow bell for Darnation Milk, and the boy-and-whale "Oliver Oil". The other signs were funny, too; though I have not seen this cartoon in years, I remember it ever so well.

A weirdie. There are no characters in this cartoon, neither "humans" or funny animals. Its all sight gags and bad puns based on the Times Square billboards known as "spectaculars". The cartoon begins and ends with a "real life" shot of Times Square, red neon predominant. As another comment points out this was not an original idea in as much as it had been recycled from an earlier cartoon. However there might have been a powerful feeling of nostalgia behind this particular cartoon. The WW2 blackout turned off the juice to the Times Square spectaculars (the glow from the lights of big east coast cities was the perfect background for u boats to use to sunk allied shipping). Times Square was "dark". Seeing Times square as it once was and, it was hoped, would be after the war was won, was uppermost in movie audiences minds.

This cartoon is a good example of the fact that while Friz Freling was technically excellent, he was possibly the least imaginative of the directors in the Warner's stable. Lights Fantastic is essentially a rehash of _Billboard Frolics(1935)_(qv) and showcases Freling's tendency to recycle gags in multiple films. This is not to say that Lights Fantastic isn't entertaining - it is and it gives you a chance to enjoy Freling at his technical best, but it also reveals the dichotomy inherent in the canon of his work.

Another reused routine (appearing for the second time in _Show Biz Bugs (1957)_(qv)) is the trained performing pigeons that flew out the theater window instead of doing their act. _Bugs And Thugs(1954)_(qv) and _Bugsy And Mugsy (1957)_ both have material cribbed from _Racketeer Rabbit(1946)_(qv). Yosemite Sam stands out as Freling's best creation, from his introduction in _Hare Trigger (1945)_(qv) to the mid 1950's when the character ran out of steam.