Buzzy Boop at the Concert

I am a huge fan of classic cartoons, especially of the ones from the Golden Age of the American Animation, including the works of the Fleischer Brothers. When I found out that one of the Betty Boop cartoons is lost, I was a little bit sad, thinking that I will never watch it, until one day when I had the pleasant surprise to find a remastered version of this cartoon and I was very eager to finally see it.

My excitement soon turned into a huge disappointment. This cartoon is pretty weak compared to the golden era of the Betty Boop series from 1932 to 1935, and it isn't even at the level of other shorts released during the same year ("The Swing School" and "Out of the Inkwell", also released in 1938, both have better plot and humor than this lame short). Betty Boop is a minor character in this short film, the main character is her annoying and uninteresting little cousin Buzzy Boop instead.

All the plot of this short is centered around the idea that classical music/opera is boring music that puts you to sleep, while jazz music is lively music that makes you wanna dance. Everyone in the audience and the orchestra falls asleep during the opera performance (a rather terrible performance of some slow and dull pieces of music, done in purpose that way), until Buzzy Boop convinces the soprano to sing jazz music instead, while everybody wakes up and starts to enjoy it. This is a harmful stereotype being perpetuated by such cartoons, and very inaccurate too, because there are hundreds of impressive and lively classical music pieces and many boring jazz songs as well. I am actually surprised that this came from the legendary Fleischer Brothers, considering that they previously made cartoons centered around classical music pieces, including "Morning, Noon and Night" from 1933, "The Spinach Overture" from 1935 and "A Car-Tune Portrait" from 1937, all of them being great animated films and far superior to this junk...they also used various classical music excerpts in Popeye and Betty Boop cartoons, that's how I discovered some of the pieces I still enjoy today.

This cartoon is maybe one of the worst from the Betty Boop series, having Betty more as a background character, it has no real plot, and it's very unfunny, with a humor of a very bad taste. I will give this short film a solid 1 out of 10. As I said earlier, some lost films deserve to remain lost...

I'm a longtime fan of Fleischer cartoons, especially Betty Boop. In her best cartoons from the Pre-Code era, she's naughty and sassy; her adventures are funny, surreal, even nightmarish at times; she goes on safaris, tames wild beasts, and runs for President. But in 1934, when stringent Code enforcement kicked in, Betty began to lose her appeal. She had to dress more demurely, for starters. The gags became more earthbound and routine. Even her professional life suffered: now she was playing teachers, or sales clerks. Code enforcer Joe Breen, chief censor of the Hays Office, was the culprit who took Bettty's boop-boop-a-doop away.

In some of the later cartoons, the Fleischer animators tried to boost the franchise by creating sidekicks. Betty acquired a cute dog, Pudgy, and a cute grandpa, Grampy. The results are sometimes amusing, but never achieve the wild heights of Betty's heyday.

'Buzzy Boop at the Concert' is one of the later efforts, but it differs from them in significant ways. First, it was long believed to be a missing film, and was rediscovered only recently in a Russian archive. Second, the cartoon itself is quite lively and fun, more so than most of the other latter-day Betty Boop releases.

Our setting is a stately concert hall. The featured attraction is Madame Shrill, billed as "Soprano Supreme." Betty is in attendance with her niece Buzzy, who is not exactly thrilled to be there. She prefers going to the movies. When the show begins, Buzzy expresses her lack of enthusiasm by 'applauding' with her feet. The accompanist makes his entrance. He's a bizarre character, who mutters strangely and assaults his piano with frightening intensity. Then, star attraction Madame Shrill enters. She too is quite odd looking. But when she commences trilling, everyone in the place falls asleep, even musicians in the orchestra pit. Buzzy decides to liven things up by sneaking into the prompter's box, and disrupting the performance. Before long, she has Madam Shrill singing swing-style, and jitter-bugging. And of course, the whole assemblage wakes up, approves, and joins in.

Admittedly, the premise is a familiar one, found in other cartoons of the era -- that is, the Jazz versus Classical Music trope, where Jazz always wins. Still, it's carried out with energy and vigor. Betty herself is not the star of the show, which was almost inevitable by this time, but Buzzy has girlish charm. In any event, while it's no lost masterpiece, 'Buzzy Boop at the Concert' is an unexpected treat for Fleischer fans.

A performance from the legendary "Madame Shrill" awaits "Betty" and her cousin who would much rather have just gone to the movies. A rather eccentric pianist gets himself organised before our soprano takes the stage to tumultuous applause before bursting into song just as the entire audience head for the arms of Morpheus. Now "Madame" isn't at all impressed by the noisy indifference to her art, so decides to up the tempo. Nope, still loads of snoring but luckily "Buzzy" decides to liven things a little by introducing a little comedy swing to the proceedings. Might that work? There's some lovely and lively synchronised tap dancing that's nicely animated, but the "Boop" cartoons were a bit like "Popeye" for me - they didn't really do much. Still, this is quite an entertaining little swipe at the pomposity of classical music and passes eight minutes amiably enough.