Cabaret de nuit

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-

Seductive for the fine - amusing portrait of a period. Not surprising but seductive for clear references, for precise irony and for imagination.

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

A Walt Disney SILLY SYMPHONY Cartoon Short.

This cartoon portrays a typical evening at the WOODLAND CAFÉ, that popular insect hot spot. A wide assortment of ugly bugs are kept entertained by apache dancers (a spider & a fly) and dancing to Big Band music.

A delightful little cartoon. The Disney animators show their versatility once again in their depiction of all things buggy. The film is also a spoof of Swing in general & Cab Calloway in particular.

The SILLY SYMPHONIES, which Walt Disney produced for a ten year period beginning in 1929, are among the most interesting of series in the field of animation. Unlike the Mickey Mouse cartoons in which action was paramount, with the Symphonies the action was made to fit the music. There was little plot in the early Symphonies, which featured lively inanimate objects and anthropomorphic plants & animals, all moving frantically to the soundtrack. Gradually, however, the Symphonies became the school where Walt's animators learned to work with color and began to experiment with plot, characterization & photographic special effects. The pages of Fable & Fairy Tale, Myth & Mother Goose were all mined to provide story lines and even Hollywood's musicals & celebrities were effectively spoofed. It was from this rich soil that Disney's feature-length animation was to spring. In 1939, with SNOW WHITE successfully behind him and PINOCCHIO & FANTASIA on the near horizon, Walt phased out the SILLY SYMPHONIES; they had run their course & served their purpose.

Only in the golden age of animation would you see bugs portrayed as swingin', jivin', jazz-lovin' critters. Woodland Cafe, which was sadly among the last 10 Silly Symphony cartoons to be produced, is one of the finest cartoons I have ever seen, with it's swingin' beats, it's cool characters (they don't really need to say much to make the short fun), and the way that it's just all-around fun. Notably, if you ever somehow see it on TV (it'd take a miracle for that to happen, mind you), there is some selective editing here and there; unlike most cartoons it's hard to really pick out exactly what is edited out, except for a scene with a ladybug smoking behind a curtain. All in all, this is one of the best cartoons of the series.