Dizzy Dishes

I won't dwell on the obvious first appearance of Miss Boop. She really is a dog. This is about one of those restaurants with a bunch of waiters and no cooks. There is one character who dominates the screen and he is totally incompetent. As watcher of cartoons we shouldn't ask questions like, How can this night club even exist?"

While Fleischer cartoons are generally well-animated and thus worth watching from that standpoint, the only real point of interest is the comparatively brief look at Betty Boop-version 1.0. Originally, Betty Boop was conceived as a dog and gradually evolved into the Betty Boop most recognizable today. There isn't much to say about the short itself, as it's nothing terribly special. The gags are occasionally cute, but it isn't especially memorable for anything other than Betty. I've had waiters this bad before, however. Dizzy Dishes is on Betty Boop-The Definitive Collection, an excellent compilation. Maybe Popeye will receive similar treatment on DVD sometime before the heat-death of the universe. For completeists only.

Technically, this is the first Betty Boop cartoon--and because of that, it's very important historically. However, if you see it, you'll notice that Betty isn't yet the Betty we all know. The animation of this character is poor, she has doggy ears (as she did in the first five or so of her films) and there is little in the way of personality--she's just a dog-like cabaret singer grinding out a tune. The actual star of the cartoon is the waiter is this goofy restaurant who is giving terrible service to a huge and scary looking character who keeps eating the plates! The ending also isn't very Boop-like, as it's quite surreal and difficult to describe. All in all, a pleasant but otherwise unremarkable little film. Judging by the look of this, it's not easy to see that Betty would soon be a big star for the Fleischer brothers and Paramount Studio.

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. 'Dizzy Dishes' is a very early cartoon for her, and as well as being nowhere near her best there is the sense that Betty was evolving still, meaning that what made her famous doesn't come through enough and she is not particularly well drawn, pretty weird actually.

Most of the animation is pretty good, the detail and use of black and white is rich and attractive enough and apart from Betty the cartoon is drawn well. The music is infectious and beautifully and cleverly orchestrated, putting one in a good mood and enhances the action wonderfully.

'Dizzy Dishes' does have some cuteness and charm, and the waiter is a lively character. The voice acting is serviceable, but did get better later on.

However, along with Betty underwhelming somewhat, like the post-introduction of production code, if anybody enjoyed the pre-code Betty Boop cartoons for being creative visually, 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 cartoon, they will be disappointed in 'Dizzy Dishes'. Because all of those are missing here, so in comparison to what came later everything feels very safe, tame and dare one say it...bland.

Judging it on its own entity too, the content is thin and only has the odd minor bit of amusement. The story is not just not much of one.

In conclusion, has historical value but there are much better Betty Boop cartoons around. 6/10 Bethany Cox

Dizzy Dishes (1930)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

This is a somewhat forgettable short but it does have one historically important thing that makes it worth watching. The story is quite simple as everyone in the film is a dog character and we are treated to our main character, a waiter, who is falling behind at work. That's until he walks out into the lobby where we see what would be the first appearance of Betty Boop. DIZZY DISHES isn't all that good as there aren't any laughs and the story itself is nothing special. The reason people will want to watch this is that it does feature the first appearance of Betty Boop, although she doesn't look like she eventually would. She has dog ears here and is a lot taller than what most people think of her as. Fans of Betty will want to check this out even though it doesn't offer much else.