Clube da Floresta

A cleverly animated and fun cartoon featuring of bunch of insects and bugs out on the town one night, singing and dancing, as well as watching a live theater featuring a villainous spider and a damsel-in-distress fly. The fireflies serving as light bulbs are also a clever touch.

Grade B-

More like a woodland nightclub.

This short features bugs on a night out in a tree filled with centipede waiters, grasshopper bands, and spider theater villains. The entire short is fueled by the music, which is typical of the Silly Symphonies brand, but while it initially showed a little bit of promise it got boring in the middle. Without a single character to focus on and to tell a story with many Silly Symphonies end up being quite forgettable.

The animation is bright, colorful, and imaginative, and it even has a bit of dialogue/singing from the Jazz-singing grasshoppers. There's not much to it other than this.

As someone who loves or at least really likes a vast majority of the Disney Silly Symphonies, Woodland Cafe was always one of those that fascinated me as a kid and I still have a lot of affection for it now. The definite highlight for me was definitely the music, although I have always found the music consistently great in the Silly Symphonies I don't think I have seen a Silly Symphony in a while that has had music as upbeat and catchy as Woodland Cafe. The dancing and choreography are just as fun and energetic, really makes you wish you were there too doing the same thing. The animation is wonderful, with beautifully coloured backgrounds and the bugs are equally vibrant and engaging. It is difficult to pick a favourite scene(or even a couple) when everything just grabbed your attention all the way through, though the scenes when a waiter pulls a stem off a cherry and pours the juice out into glasses for an elderly bee and with the show between the female fly and the male spider always did stand out. I have seen the issue of the stereotypes being raised on numerous occasions. I won't deny it, the characters are stereotypical, but considering that the cartoon is a spoof on the "Harlem" musicals of the time and that I didn't find them offensive at all(in fact they were somewhat affectionate to me), that wasn't a problem. So in conclusion, a cartoon that I have always found fascinating and still love to this day. 10/10 Bethany Cox

Some fireflies light up the entrance to a nightclub for bugs. There is every conceivable kind of creepy-crawly one can imagine. They dance; they sing; they play instruments. It is quite the colorful presentation, but the jazzy music is the strongest part of this cartoon. Pretty well done Silly Symphony.

"Woodland Café" is a film that I am sure the Disney Corporation would like to forget about, as it hasn't aged well. Well, at least in some ways it hasn't aged well. The animation is terrific...as is the Technicolor. But the idea of making a Cotton Club for bugs starring 'black' bugs as entertainers simply is a dated stereotype...one that many today would find offensive.

By the way, the dance between the spider and the lady bug is called 'The Apache Dance'...a French dance popularized in Bohemian cafés. It is supposed to parody a fight between a pimp and one of his working girls and it is an odd choice for a kids film.

Overall, well animated but strange and easy to skip. Not bad...just not all that good either.