Papa Gets the Bird

Mama Bear tells Papa Bear to give the canary a bath.

The Harman-Ising producing pair were in decline at MGM in this period. With their contract, now six years old, they had been granted enormous budgets, but their tendency was to produce cartoons that were beautiful to look at, but their serious and often maudlin plots were intended to compete with Disney, rather than striking out on their own path. Rudy Ising ventured into funny cartoons earlier, and he directed the first of the Bear Family cartoons, which would eventually metamorph into MGM's Barney Bear series.

This one has some amusing slapstick, but the continued insistence on ornate, candybox backgrounds are a distraction from the fun.

'Papa Gets the Bird' (1940)

Opening thoughts: While Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising didn't go into daring, controversial subject territory very often, when they did the results were often quite surprising in a good way. Their output was inconsistent, some very good and more cartoons but also some rather mediocre ones, which was apparent in the Happy Harmonies series. One of Harmon's least appealing cartoons is 'Papa Gets the Bird'. Not all the Three Bears cartoons were bad at all, one actually was very good, but this average at best cartoon is for me the worst. It has good things, but suffers from its lack of laughs and energy and that the characters do not appeal in the slightest. When it comes to ranking Harman's cartoons, 'Papa Gets the Bird' is for me definitely among his worst and is as weak as Ising at his worst. Which is not a good position at all to be in.

Good things: It is very well made visually on the most part, with it being beautifully detailed and a mix of vibrant and unsettling. It doesn't try to do too much while not being simplistic at the same time, the hallucinatory visuals being wonderfully surreal in a way seldom seen in other Harman cartoons. The music is outstanding, lush, characterful with the odd haunting moment.

Wilbur had a few mildly amusing moments. The voice cast do give their all with their poor material.

Bad things: That however is pretty much it for the good things. The gag count is very low here in 'Papa Gets the Bird', and what there is is neither funny or creative and is instead stale and tired with no wit or sharpness. Actually found some of it on the repetitive side too. The story is very flimsy with too little content and even for a premise that this viewer was expecting to not contain many surprises the action was excessively predictable.

Furthermore, the energy just isn't there and just flags, while the attempts at surrealism are very bland and a little too odd. Imagination is nowhere in sight. Apart from fleeting moments with Wilbur, the characters don't engage or appeal. Papa is not interesting or amusing, with the writing really overdoing his laziness and idiocy he came over as insultingly obnoxious. Mama has nothing to do and is pointless. The chemistry between the characters is disconnected.

Concluding thoughts: All in all, very underwhelming.

4/10.

Papa Bear is lazy and a "nincompoop." When Mama Bear decides the canary needs a bath and Papa will need to take care of it, it becomes a total catastrophe. Papa enlists Junior and everything goes down the tubes. There are a series of events with a well that are pretty funny. The bird is no help at all. Not a bad cartoon with decent slapstick action.

Papa Bear is taking a nap while his son Wilbur is carrying a log. Mama Bear tells Papa to give their canary a bath. It does not go well.

This is a Hugh Harman production. The animation is a bit ugly. Papa Bear is not loveable. It's all a bit bitter. The frustrated dad is a very standard sitcom trope. I still don't understand the salt. Is Wilbur trying to eat the bird or is that part of the bath? This is fine.

The Bears were a relatively brief (thankfully) series of shorts that featured an irritable (and irritating) Papa, a Mama that would have driven Carrie Nation to the Demon Rum for refuge and an obnoxious Baby. Not to be confused with the more enjoyable series that Warner Brothers did somewhat later, this MGM series had a few good moments, but the characters are such a waste of space that the viewer has no reason to care what happens to them and thus doesn't give a flip about anything on-screen. The most notable thing about this is the title, which is a play on words with an alternate meaning that got past the Production Code office, probably because they didn't get the joke. The title gets this one six points alone. The short rates a one by itself. For MGM completeists.