Lullaby Land

A Walt Disney SILLY SYMPHONY Cartoon Short.

A tiny dreaming tot finds he & his toy dog in LULLABY LAND, where powder puffs & rattles grow on the vegetation and potty seats march over the quilted hills. Then there's the small matter of the bogeymen...

This is an utterly charming little film, which entices the eye of the viewer to pick out all the baby motifs.

The SILLY SYMPHONIES, which Walt Disney produced for a ten year period beginning in 1929, are among the most fascinating of all animated series. Unlike the Mickey Mouse cartoons in which action was paramount, with the Symphonies the action was made to fit the music. There was little plot in the early Symphonies, which featured lively inanimate objects and anthropomorphic plants & animals, all moving frantically to the soundtrack. Gradually, however, the Symphonies became the school where Walt's animators learned to work with color and began to experiment with plot, characterization & photographic special effects. The pages of Fable & Fairy Tale, Myth & Mother Goose were all mined to provide story lines and even Hollywood's musicals & celebrities were effectively spoofed. It was from this rich soil that Disney's feature-length animation was to spring. In 1939, with SNOW WHITE successfully behind him and PINOCCHIO & FANTASIA on the near horizon, Walt phased out the SILLY SYMPHONIES; they had run their course & served their purpose.

A beautiful cartoon, where all the elements of a baby's world are blown up to epic proportions in his dream. Not only entertaining, but it's also marked by a certain nostalgic quality in this modern disposable diaper world. **** out of ****

A cute, round-cheeked baby's dream turns into a nightmare when he plays with the contents of a giant match box and is pursued by giant flames that when doused in water are transformed in a puff of smoke into a trio of bogey men that anticipate the Pink Elephants that go on parade a few years later in 'Dumbo'.

Walt Disney was on a role with these Silly Symphonies, letting his imagination run wild with clever and miraculous sequences of magic. Here, a baby is transported to Lullaby Land while dreaming, where we see a display of pacifiers, diapers, bottles, and blankets come to life. We also see anti-babies stuff such as scissors, knives, fountain pens, and matches, which haunt the kid and his doll dog as well.

It is nice to include some baby-themed characters in the cartoon as well, including the Boogeyman and the Sandman. Neat stuff here.

Grade B

Not one of my favourite Disney Silly Symphonies but still a very good cartoon. It is a little too sugary cute, but there is much to compensate. Visually, it is amazing with some surrealistic images seen with the dance of the boogie men, backgrounds and colours that still look absolutely beautiful and the baby's character features are real in alternative to exaggerated. The music is wonderful also, catchy and appropriately dreamy. Add to that colourful characters, a story that is refreshingly different in the sense that it is a whole new creative world rather than a real situation or a fairy-tale like world and fast pacing and we have a fun and thrilling cartoon. Not a favourite, but recommended definitely. 8/10 Bethany Cox