The Gay Gaucho

Harman and Ising produced this Cubby Bear cartoon for Van Beuren and the difference in quality shows. Although Cubby comes off as a variant of Bosko, every technical detail is handled better than under van Beuren's home staff: sound, music, backgrounding, voice and animation are all clearly superior.

What happened? The next home-grown Cubby, CROON CRAZY was a lot better too. Perhaps it was simply a staff shakeup, but at this distance, it's hard to tell.

The story is just as crude and annoying to the modern viewer as any other van Beuren product. But writing always seems the last thing to get better. People don't seem to realize its issues.

Van Bueren Studios' Cubby the Bear series comprised of just 17 cartoons made between 1933-1934. As much as it pains me to say it, speaking as a big animation fan, it is not hard to see why the character and the series weren't so popular and didn't last long.

'The Gay Gaucho' is not a great cartoon, far from it, and has its fair share of faults that mostly apply to pretty much all of the Cubby the Bear cartoons. It is however one of Cubby's best, decide for yourself as to whether that is saying much. To me, despite still not rating it particularly highly, it is, being one of not many to be above mediocre. It manages a few wry chuckles and it's cute without being saccharine.

Set in the Argentine, 'The Gay Gaucho' is one of the few Cubby cartoons that are well animated. It's fluid, it has nice if simple detail and it isn't sloppy in drawing. Nothing static either and Cubby looks better than most outings. The villain is a fun character with a bit of menace.

In the second half, 'The Gay Gaucho' picks up the pace and resembles some kind of story.

Best thing about 'The Gay Gaucho' though is the music score. It is so beautifully and cleverly orchestrated and full of lively energy that is sorely lacking elsewhere, doing so well with enhancing the action.

Cubby himself however is one of the main factors that brings the cartoon down. He is one of the blandest and most personality-deprived characters ever to exist. Credit is due making him more heroic than usual (though it is a stock role that any character in all honesty could fill, for example it's a tailor-made role for Mickey Mouse who also happened to do it much better) and giving him a motivation, that doesn't stop us from understanding why the character and his series was so short-lived.

His girlfriend isn't much better. Think the love interests for similar early male characters from Disney and Looney Tunes except much blander and with significantly less charm or personality and you have her.

While 'The Gay Gaucho' picks up in the second half, it's plot less, aimless and routine in the first half. Even the story-oriented second half is derivative of better stuff. The ending is too much of a cheat.

Overall, average but watchable. 5/10 Bethany Cox

Although "Gay Gaucho" is competently animated, it's not a particularly distinguished cartoon because nothing even begins to happen in it until the cartoon is half complete. In other words, there is tons of filler-- and cutesy filler at that. Because of this, there isn't a lot of room left for plot or laughs.

This cartoon is set, presumably, in South America. Cubby the bear mostly just runs about looking cute and with eyes like saucers. Only at the midway point does Pedro the Bandito show up and makes the moves on the Senorita that Cubby is dancing with--so Cubby has to go to the rescue. The very end is kind of cute but otherwise an undistinguished cartoon in just about every possible way. Not terrible...just not very good.