My Friend the Monkey

This really isn't a Betty Boop cartoon. It's really a "Pudgy" cartoon, featuring her little dog. There's a big difference in humor. This really isn't funny and, of course, it doesn't have the music you'd get with one of Betty's cartoons. Betty usually sings a catchy song or two.

Basically, all it is, is Pudgy getting teed off by watching a little monkey eat the food in the house and do other shenanigans (there's an old word, for you). Betty was listening to an organ grinder down below her apartment and invited the monkey upstairs to meet her dog. That was her mistake. While she goes back down to barter with the organ grinder to purchase the beast, chaos ensues upstairs with the monkey.

Pudgy thinks all is finally well at the end until Betty has some bad news for him!

Because this is one of the last Betty Boop cartoons by Fleischer Brothers Studio, she looks different. In the last couple years, the studio updated her--making Betty taller, less sexy and more contemporary. So don't be surprised when you see this.

The cartoon begins with an organ grinder and his monkey outside Betty's window. Betty thinks the monkey is wonderful and invites it in to play with Pudgy while she goes outside to bargain with the organ grinder. During this playtime, the monkey goes nuts and destroys Betty's home--and Pudgy tries, in vain, to stop it. Eventually Betty returns and announces she just bought the monkey--proving she is indeed insane.

There isn't a lot of edge or laughs to this one. The animation quality is nice but it's an otherwise unremarkable little cartoon that makes little sense.

A good deal of the pre-Production Code Betty Boop cartoons are daring and creative, with content that makes one amazed at what's gotten away with. While the later Betty Boop cartoons made after the Code was enforced are still watchable and exceptionally well-made, they are so toned down that they feel bland.

Fleischer were responsible for some brilliant cartoons, some of them still among my favourites. Their visual style was often stunning and some of the most imaginative and ahead of its time in animation. The character of Betty Boop, one of their most famous and prolific characters, may not be for all tastes and sadly not as popular now, but her sex appeal was quite daring for the time and to me there is an adorable sensual charm about her.

'My Friend the Monkey' is somewhat of an average cartoon and feels more a Pudgy cartoon than Betty Boop.

Betty is cute and charming enough but is at best a supporting character and one with little to do in screen time and writing. The story is thin on the ground and what there is of it is very predictable.

As has been said many times about the post-Production Code Betty Boop cartoons, there is a big personal preference for the more risqué, surreal, creative and more consistently humorous and imaginative pre-Production Code Betty Boop cartoons, having been toned down by the limitations of the code many of the later cartoons are tame in comparison and have a blandness. There is a lack of laughs and creativity too.

The animation in 'My Friend the Monkey' is as to be expected extremely good, being beautifully drawn, crisply shaded and meticulous in detail. The music is infectious, lush and dynamic. It's a cute cartoon and not too saccharine.

Pudgy and the monkey have much of the screen-time and they are an adorable and lively presence, even if the monkey is also a pest.

In summary, average cartoon and while acceptable enough as a Pudgy cartoon it disappoints for Betty Boop. 5/10 Bethany Cox