Hold Anything

The Bosko cartoons may not be animation masterpieces, but they are fascinating as examples of Looney Tunes in their early days before the creation of more compelling characters and funnier and more creative cartoons.

After an interesting if just slightly above average and not much more pilot cartoon 'The Talk-Ink Kid' and the decent 'Sinkin' in the Bathtub' and 'Congo Jazz', 'Hold Anything' is not great and the execution is variable but most of it works well. While a hit and miss cartoon, it hits more than it misses, or at least to me it does.

'Hold Anything's' weakest element is the story, very much like 'Congo Jazz' the story here is more a paper-thin excuse to string along music and gags with a few draggy stretches and an ending that doesn't feel that well rounded off, pretty anti-climactic actually.

Most of the gags work well, but faring less well is the repetitive business with the goat's tail, that was good the first time or two but grew tired quickly especially when the more it happened the less inspired the methods got. Honey is also rather bland.

On the other hand, the animation is not bad at all. Not exactly refined but fluid and crisp enough with some nice detail, it is especially good in the meticulous backgrounds and some remarkably flexible yet natural movements for Bosko. The music is 'Hold Anything's' highlight component, its infectious energy, rousing merriment, lush orchestration and how well it fits with the animation is just a joy.

While none of the gags are hilarious, most of them are amusing, like the udder gag and the goat being floated up as helium. Parts are cute and there is much less of a static feel than there was in 'The Talk-Ink Kid' in sound quality. Bosko is never going to be one of my favourite cartoon characters, or among the all-time greats, but he has more personality this time round and it's more endearing than before.

In summary, variable but mostly works. 7/10 Bethany Cox

Since the previous reviewer mentioned most of the details of Hold Anything, I'll just mention that the mice look uncannily like Walt Disney's Mickey. Perhaps not surprising since directors Hugh Harmon and Rudolf Ising had previously worked for Disney as animators when he created Oswald the Lucky Rabbit with Ub Iwerks with the rabbit looking like the Famous Mouse with long ears and a fluffy tail. Another entertaining musical short that seems inspired by the fame of the first successful sound cartoon, Steamboat Willie, that put Mickey Mouse and Walt Disney on the map of iconic status. Worth a look for anyone interested in Warner Bros. animation before Tex Avery arrived to give it a new identity.

Before Warner Bros.'s animation department gave us Bugs, Daffy, Porky, etc., their most famous star was a small, strange character named Bosko; I think that he looks like a black-face performer. In "Hold Anything", Bosko is participating in construction, when he suddenly gets infatuated with Honey.

Mostly, I take little interest in WB's early 1930s cartoons. But I noticed that the credits said "Drawn by Isadore Freleng". Hardcore fans probably know that Isadore was Friz Freleng, later one of the animation department's top directors. Obviously, he had to start somewhere, and this wasn't a bad place. Worth seeing, and available on YouTube.

Every studio seemed to have their principle character. Warner had Bosko, and unlike some of the more memorable ones, he has faded into obscurity. They did use him in a lot of features, however. Here he uses objects at a construction site as musical instruments. He doesn't seem to get much work done, and when his girlfriend shows up, even less. There are some decent sight gags with inflatable goats and Bosko turning into six Boskos, but not a whole lot of plot.

Hold Anything (1930)

** (out of 4)

Early animated film from Warner before they gave us their more memorable (and better known) characters. Bosko is doing construction where he tries to do everything as if it were a note of music. I know Bosko was probably Warner's biggest character at the time but I don't think he holds up too well (and who knows if he did in 1930). The biggest problem I had with this short was that the music numbers weren't all that memorable and even though this ran under ten-minutes you can't help but feel like it's longer. There are some mice in the film, all looking like Mickey Mouse, which I guess should be expected since the director's originally worked at Disney.