Koko Trains 'Em

Max Fleischer and his wife or girlfriend have a cute little dog with them at the studio. Max decides to draw the dog but every time he does, the drawing changes into Koko the Clown. Finally, Max decides to give Koko a whip and an assignment: "Here's a dog (of your own) to train," he says.

This looks a lot better than I telling it as the clever artwork is fun to see. (It better be since there is absolutely no sound, not even sound-effects.)

In no time, Koko features this dog in a carnival act inside a circus tent, packed with paying customers. The dog doesn't disappoint - he's amazing. He does tricks, like standing up on his tail or overly dramatic begging for food. He does imitations, such as a dog in a pound, or taking a family portrait or - the one I literally roared laughing at - Teddy Roosevelt.

Unfortunately, that was the highlight of this 11-minute cartoon as the last five minutes of it was a little too slow and repetitive. Koko asks the dog to play dead with the idea that his trained flea will wake up the dog. It does, but hundreds of fleas wind up escaping out of their little box and cause havoc. In this case, I'm making sound, perhaps, better than how it played because mostly all we saw were people and inanimate objects scratching themselves until the end.

Thus, this is a cartoon that started strong, but finished weak and was way too long for the material it presented. It's also unusual in that almost all of these early Fleischer efforts were extremely entertaining while this was just "fair," at best.

From the late 1910s through the 1920s, Koko the Clown was among the most consistently enjoyable animated characters in films. And, unlike many early cartoons, the Koko shorts actually have held up well over the years and are still a pleasure to watch today...and many are posted on YouTube...including this one.

When the film begins, Max Fleischer is introduced to a cute puppy. He then takes inspiration from the dog and draws Koko's dog, Fitz. However, Koko seems like a bit of a jerk and uses a whip to train the animal. Fortunately, he doesn't actually hit the pooch during the cartoon. Instead, he puts on a show circus-style for tons of fans who love the act. Sadly, all the fun is ended when some of the fleas from the flea circus get loose.

Clever, fun and never dull...this cartoon is well worth your time....even 95 years later!

Dave Fleischer was responsible for many gems. Ones that were amusing and charming, though over-cuteness did come through in some efforts and the stories were always pretty thin, with appealing characters, outstanding music and visuals that were inventive and with innovative animation techniques.

Ko-Ko similarly was an always amiable character to watch and among the better recurring characters in Fleischer's early work. Likewise, his series of Out of the Inkwell cartoons were among the best early efforts of Fleischer and silent cartoons in general. Or at least most of the time. Unfortunately 'Ko'Ko Trains Em', while far from a bad cartoon, is an exception, and also something of a disappointment. As noted, it went from very good, with a strong first half, to just above average with a wanting second.

One expects the animation to be primitive and very low quality. While Fleischer became more refined and inventive later certainly, the animation is surprisingly pretty good with some nice visual wackiness and wit.

'Ko-Ko Trains Em' is lively and great fun to begin with, with very funny, the best of them hilarious, and inventively timed gags with a sharp and wonderfully bizarre humour style. Ko-Ko himself is likeable and amusing, but the dog with some ingenious imitations (indeed the Roosevelt one is a scream) steals the show from under him.

Which is why it is such a shame that the second half is nowhere near as good. The pacing loses its liveliness and the cartoon drags. There is a real sense that there was a running out of ideas because 'Ko-Ko Trains Em' really struggles to fill over ten minutes worth of story, which was formulaic and fairly thin to begin with but completely neglected later.

The material is nowhere near as imaginative or as funny, gags similarly fewer, and the second half is too heavy in repetition, making the cartoon feel very disjointed. 'Ko-Ko Trains Em' could easily have just had the first half and finished at the half-way point with a more rounded ending, because the second half felt too much like tacked on and unneeded material there for padding the length out purposes. That might not have been the intention but that is how it came across as.

Overall, above average but a disappointment. 6/10 Bethany Cox

Just watched this Max Fleischer/Koko the Clown cartoon on YouTube. Except for music score and sound effects, this was a silent animated short. In this one, cartoonist Max is with a woman with a puppy which he attempts to draw but that puppy keeps turning into Koko. So he draws another puppy for Koko to train at a circus. There are a few amusing gags like the dog literally splitting in two when he jumps up and down or turning into the 26th president Theodore Roosevelt and I also liked seeing many of those little fleas making the dog, various customers, and many inanimate objects like a tree and a couple of statues scratching themselves. Other than that, this was a little more "blah" than usual Max Fleischer cartoon.