Viva Willie

In 1930, Ub Iwerks left the Disney company and set out to make his own cartoons. After all, he was a huge creative force at Walt's company and helped create Mickey Mouse and many great early Disney cartoons. Unfortunately, his early films outside of Disney were rather poor and his first regular character, Flip the Frog, as dull as can be. Fortunately, a couple years later, Ub hit upon the Willi Whopper character--a likable little liar who tells HUGE stories about his supposed exploits.

This is the final Willie cartoon and for the next two years Iwerks would switch to his color cartoons...which looked great but often were inferior to the Willie cartoons because they lacked the humor and likability of the kid.

In this somewhat ordinary installment, Willie is in Arizona--near the Mexican border during the time of the old west. His girl is kidnapped by a bandit and he spends the rest of the film tracking him and his gang down and distributing justice!

This is only a "fair" Willie Whopper cartoon, not because Willie can't come up with a wild fantasy but the jokes in here weren't that great. Willie and his buddy see a statue of Poncho Villa and, of course, our hero says "You think's he tough? Well, let me tell you......"

The main "gag" is Willie's south-of-the-border fairy tale revolves around a harmonica. He accidentally swallows it and then sounds like an idiot. Of course that doesn't impress the banditos too much, either, and they make a fool of him at the local bar. In addition, Willie's horse drinks an entire barrel of beer and is blitzed. That doesn't help Willie.

Under these circumstances, how is Willie going to go after the girl that the head bandit has kidnapped? We see some inventive answers to that question but most of them aren't too funny. The risqué ending - with Willie and the girl - is kind of strange, and I did enjoy that.

The Willie Woppers are among the most circulated of the Iwerks animations and they are representative of his work and indeed of the independent cartoons of the thirties - always an agreeable break in a first half of the show but less than brilliant. The Disney work blew away the opposition, showing a whole lot more man hours and often innovating.

Willie wasn't a particularly endearing character but his tall tale adventures were fun. This one is pretty simple. Insutin' the Sultan is more lively. Still our hero battling bandidos to the strains of "last Roundup" fills in the time nicely.

Ub Iwerks's Willie Whopper series of cartoons was short-lived, only lasting a year from 1933 to 1934. On the most part the Willie Whopper cartoons are not great or cartoon/animated masterpieces and it is sort of understandable as to why Willie didn't make it bigger. However they are far from terrible ones either and do amuse and charm.

1934's 'Viva Willie' is the final Willie Whopper cartoon. It is also not one of the best Willie Whopper cartoons to me, towards the weaker half. It's still pretty entertaining though. And this is coming from somebody who has only just gotten acquainted with the series as a huge animation fan. Just don't expect a masterpiece or too much.

'Viva Willie' is on the formulaic side with conflict that is somewhat predictable, it is not hard to figure out at all how it all ends or what goes on in the cartoon.

Willie himself is a bit bland and a fairly limited character, while still being likeable, and the material is also bland and lacks variety.

However, there is a lot of nice background work, smooth drawing, lively black and white and inventive little things. The music is energetic and characterful with appealing orchestration. The cartoon goes at a lively pace, has an appealing charm, is amusing and the tale is wonderfully outlandish.

There are a lot of very amusing and sweet little laughs which makes it entertaining. Although slightly bland, Willie avoids being annoying and he avoids being sickly sweet as well, fairly likeable. The supporting characters are lively enough. The setting is nicely done though it has been handled more inventively elsewhere. The ending is the cartoon's highlight.

In summary, pretty entertaining but not the best of cartoons for a short-lived character to go out on. 6/10 Bethany Cox