We Did It

A good deal of the pre-Production Code Betty Boop cartoons are daring and creative, with content that makes one amazed at what's gotten away with. While the later Betty Boop cartoons made after the Code was enforced are still watchable and exceptionally well-made, they are so toned down that they feel bland.

Fleischer were responsible for some brilliant cartoons, some of them still among my favourites. Their visual style was 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 good news is that she has not lost her charm, she is still cute and her comic timing is good.

Less good is that, thanks to the production code her sensuality is heavily muted, and it was like she had lost a large part of what made her such a unique character back then and what made her popular, her treatment of Pudgy also seemed a bit unusually cruel for her and she isn't in enough of the cartoon to shine properly.

If anybody enjoyed the pre-code Betty Boop cartoons for being wonderfully surreal and for its daring risqué content that was ahead of the time back in the 30s and wouldn't be seen a lot now in cartoons, they will be disappointed here. Both are missing which gives a rather tame and bland feel here.

'We Did It' is very reliant on the cutesy factor, and to me it goes overboard in it, you'd be hard pressed to find a more saccharine Betty Boop cartoon than the latter half of 'We Did It'. So much so, it was like it replaced imagination, creativity laughs and edge, because along with the surreal and risqué factor all four of those were lacking in 'We Did It'.

On the plus side, as always the animation is extremely good, very beautifully drawn and meticulous in detail. The music is infectious and dynamic with the action.

Pudgy is adorable, as are the mischievous kittens, and the voice acting is good.

In summary, watchable and very well made but the saccharine-ness just got a little too much at the end of the day. 4/10 Bethany Cox

Many of the Boop cartoons involve her dog getting blamed for something he didn't do. This time the perpetrators are three kittens. But, unfortunately, it leads to a really soft ending. I would hate to have the insurance policy on Betty's house because it gets destroyed in about half the cartoons. Anyway, this is a lesser product of the later Betty Boop cartoons. When the code hit, it took all the naughtiness out of the equation.

I have seen a ton of Betty Boop cartoons--probably just about every one you can locate today. Some are very good, some are pretty bad and a bunch in the middle. However, even the bad ones are extremely well animated, as the Fleischer Brothers Studio (part of Paramount) always provided exceptionally high quality backgrounds and characters--though they also were mostly in black & white.

"We Did It" is among the most difficult to like of the Betty Boop cartoons. It's ultra-cutesy and the ending quite saccharine. In consists of three kittens getting loose and Pudgy the dog trying to stop them from destroying everything. And, Betty, being an insane dog owner, begins spanking the crap out of Pudgy--even though he's totally innocent! All in all, too syrupy for me. It's missing an edge and seems like the sort of thing that strictly appeals to the undemanding.