Review by planktonrules

In the late 20s and through the 30s, Disney won an awful lot of awards for its Silly Symphony line of cartoons. Unlike the more successful (and often more enjoyable) Mickey Mouse cartoons, these cartoons did not have recurring characters and they mostly involved music and singing. Many are amazingly artistic, a few are insipid. However, this spurred on copycats from other studios--and they seldom even came close to the Disney films. The worst thing about these copycats is that they often were ultra-cutesy and nauseating...and "The Song of the Birds" is certainly no exception.

First off, you won't mistake this Fleischer Brothers film with a Disney one for two obvious reasons. Disney held a monopoly on the use of Three Color Technicolor--the first true all color film process. Other studios making color films had to use various types of two color systems--such as Cinecolor and Two Color Technicolor. So, instead of a full spectrum of colors, the colors were all combinations of orange and green...and the cartoons look a bit odd as a result. Additionally, the animation, while comparable to most other studios clearly was not up to Disney standards.

The cartoon itself is an awful and preachy mess. A little bird fledges from the nest and a brain-addled little boy (who apparently can only giggle...perhaps due to a cerebral injury) shoots the bird. The kid is sorry and the mommy and daddy bird come and there's lots of tears and singing and...well...yecch!! Preachy nonsense if you ask me and the only reason it earns a 2 is that the animation isn't bad. Otherwise, this is a terrible film...one best shown to prisoners to punish them for serious rule infractions! Or, it can be shown to guys on Death Row to encourage them to either take their own lives or give up making appeals!! Sadly the 1930s was full of this sort of tripe--and most studios made a ton of them.