Viva Buddy

This is another Leon Schlesinger/Looney Tunes cartoon from the '30s that starred perhaps the blandest character that Warner Bros. ever had in their roster: Buddy. Here, he's in, I guess, Mexico playing a Latin American-flavored tune while we encounter many, I'm thinking, stereotypes of the era including a Wallace Beery-inspired Pancho Villa character. Cookie's there too, dancing as a senorita who gets both Pancho's and Buddy's attention. Filled with plenty of violent gags, Viva Buddy moves along briskly and is a little entertaining but it also seems a little rushed and the way it ends is a little bit of a cop-out. Still, I'd recommend this to any Warner cartoon completist out there and you gotta dig the caricatures of The Four Marx Brothers (including one of them actually pronouncing himself as "chee-co" instead of the usual "chick-co"!) in the middle of all this...

Now a fairly obscure character, Buddy was the second Warner Brothers Looney Tunes character, after Bosko and followed by Beans the Cat. Buddy didn't last long, being retired in 1935 after 23 cartoons starting in 1933.

The filmography of Buddy is a mixed bag, some decent ones (none of the cartoons up to 'Viva Buddy' were great, even the best ones), some average ones and the odd mediocre one (before this cartoons, this applied to 'Buddy's Show Boat' and 'Buddy's Bearcats'. 'Viva Buddy' is one of the average ones. As has been reiterated a few times before, the Buddy cartoons are intriguing to see how very early Looney Tunes characters, before the iconic ones with far more interesting and funnier personalities were introduced, fared.

'Viva Buddy' has good things. The animation is nicely drawn and detailed with the black and white looking crisp. Even better is the music score. Music played a big part in the Buddy cartoons and it was essential for it to work. Luckily it has the liveliness and energy, as well as the lush and vibrant orchestration. Billy Bletcher's voice acting is very good.

A re-designed Cookie is charming if more a story device, though the most colourful character is Pancho. A few of the gags are amusing, it is interesting to see the Marx Brothers featured notably Zeppo and it has more energy than most Buddy cartoons.

However, the cartoon does feel rushed and the ending is far too abrupt, making the viewer feel a bit cheated. The story is very thin and formulaic, even with more energy, and some of the other gags suffer from over-familiarity, repetitiveness and needing crisper timing.

Buddy is a large part of the problem too. He just isn't a particularly interesting or compelling in personality character, pretty bland actually, and his comic timing is barely there.

Overall, average but watchable. 5/10 Bethany Cox

A lot of people dislike Merrie Melodies' first star, Bosko the Talk-Ink Kid, who may have been a monkey or may have been a small Negro, but who was clearly a rip-off of Mickey Mouse, set up by Harman & Ising after they left Disney and Universal -- that's a long story and we won't go into it here.

But after they tried to cut out Leon Schlesinger as a middleman, Mr. Schlesinger raided their shop and left them, temporarily at least without resources. But he had no cartoon 'star' so there was one invented for him: Buddy, who may not have been offensively drawn, but who was boring. Here he sings 'Monterrey' in a squeaky, annoying voice and goes through a small number of badly-timed gags on a Mexican theme. Even Billy Bletcher doing some voice work can't help this stinker.