Betty Boop for President

Betty Boop for President (1932)

*** (out of 4)

It's funny to watch this animated short from 1932 because it really does play out like a music video from the 80's. The "song" here would deal with Betty singing to become your next President and talking about the various things she would do for the country. She's running against someone calling himself Mr. Nobody who of course is making a lot of fake promises. This here is a pretty catchy little gem that manages to make you smile as well as keep you entertained throughout the running time. The animation itself is of high quality as you'd expect but it's the song that really makes this seem so fresh and original. Fans of Betty Boop will certainly enjoy this one.

Fleischer were responsible for some brilliant cartoons, some of them still among my favourites. Their visual style 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. The charm, sensuality and adorability factors can be seen throughout, a joy to watch as always.

'Betty Boop for President' is interesting for its historical content and when it comes to the concept and the material it is one of the most unique and interesting Betty Boop cartoons. On its own merits, it's still a lot of fun. This said, some of the jokes may, most likely to in fact, go over heads of children and some modern viewers not familiar with what they're referencing. Mostly it wasn't an issue for me, but there were one or two parts where lack of familiarity meant the joke fell flat.

However, the black and white animation is very good, smooth, meticulously detailed and well drawn with the black and white not looking too primitive. A lot of it is actually very imaginative. Even better is the music, which is rousing, catchy and unquestionably accessible to anybody who loves or is familiar with the compositional style.

Writing-wise, it's often very clever and funny with the jokes a vast majority of the time very sharply written and timed. There is a lot of charm, a lot of energy and the story is more eventful than most Betty Boop cartoons.

All in all, a lot of fun and interesting if not completely successful. 8/10 Bethany Cox

This is a wonderful mix of satire and the strangeness that could be found in the best of the early Fleischer shorts, particularly Betty Boop cartoons. A knowledge of 1930s politics helps with some of the jokes, but it's funny even if you don't know who Herbert Hoover or FDR were. These shorts are exceptionally fine work in many cases and are always enjoyable to watch, at least through 1934 or so. Even the ones done later are reasonably good, even if Warner Brothers and MGM had by then surpassed what the Fleischers were doing. In print and available. Well worth watching. Most recommended.

Like the title says, Betty Boop is running for president. Her message was a populist one of the era (smacking of the communist redistribution of the wealth pledge) as well as the legalization of booze. Throughout, there are a few funny bits (such as the impersonations as well as the argument between the Republicans and Democrats that uses a bit of naughty language they would NOT have allowed after the Production Code was strengthened in 1934). But there also is a lot of irrelevant material (bits that just seem to come out of nowhere) and an odd bit about an apparent homosexual that keep this from being a better and more cohesive cartoon. Not bad but not among the better outings of the Boopster.

This "movie" is made up of spliced-together classic Fliescher shorts with the audio track replaced with bad dialogue which means the lipsynch is completely off (naturally).

Characters who previously had no voices were given voices and Betty is the only character who sounds anything like the previous voice acting and the animation quality is inconsistent since they use shorts from many different eras of Betty Boop cartoons.

This movie would be slightly more valuable if it had the intact audio, since it is the visuals (though cut to pieces) from lots of wonderful classic Boop cartoons. This movie feels very forced and is really only worth watching for gag value.