Sinkin' in the Bathtub

In this Looney Tunes short, the first Looney Tunes short ever made (the first proper one anyway), the main characters, Bosko and Honey, are black people. This makes watching the cartoon very sad, because Bosko and Honey are portrayed more as animals than people (otherwise it would not be a big deal at all). You grow to love them, but I cannot come over the fact that I am watching cartoon PEOPLE rather than cartoon ANIMALS. Even though I am seethingly against racism, I cannot help but love this cartoon (like a few other racist Looney Tunes shorts, but not in the same way).

Anyhow, in this very odd (for today's standards) cartoon, there are two characters called Bosko and Honey. They are both black people, Bosko is a person who manages to make an instrument out of everything and Honey is his sweet sweetheart. They both go out together and find themselves in some quite turbulent adventures, but everything becomes all right in the end and shows that (not avoiding the cliché) love always finds a way. :-)

I loved this short because I found Bosko and Honey such cute characters, I liked the "oddness" of the episode and I enjoyed the old type of slapstick involved (which ran through both Looney Tunes and Walt Disney's cartoons at the same time, in very similar ways).

I recommend "Sinkin' in the Bathtub" to people who can understand the racism of this episode and not let it spoil the short, and to cartoon historians. It is worth it for every Looney Tunes fan to watch just for the fact that this was the first Looney Tunes cartoon (which was a series that ran until 1969). Enjoy "Sinkin' in the Bathtub"! :-)

8 and a half out of ten.

In this first Looney Tunes offering, we meet Bosco. I don't know if he is intended to be a monkey or a black person. I hope it's the former. He takes a really interesting bath (quite creative) and heads off in his car to meet his girlfriend. Things don't go so well, as obstacles along the way keep them from having comfortable date. For starters, he brings her tulips but a goat eats them when he isn't looking. All in all, decent animation and music.

Like Bosko's debut/pilot cartoon 'Bosko the Talk-Ink Kid', 'Sinkin' in the Bathtub' is interesting historically, with it being the first official Looney Tunes cartoon. It is also fascinating to see Loone Tunes in their early days before the creation of more compelling characters and funnier and more creative cartoons.

Again like 'Bosko the Talk-Ink Kid', 'Sinkin' in the Bathtub' is an decent cartoon on its own, not bad but not much to get excited about. The story is paper thin and has its slow stretches, including an overly-sentimental moment with Bosko grieving over flowers, also getting a little repetitive towards the end. Bosko and Honey while cute do lack personality somewhat outside of being stereotypes.

However, the animation is not bad at all, not exactly refined but fluid and crisp enough with some nice detail. The music is suitably bubbly and lush, with clever use of pre-existing material.

There are some amusing moments, especially with the car, the sound is not as static as before, the cartoon is very cute without being too much and it is hard not to feel cheerful or smile at least while watching.

In summary, decent but not great, worth seeing for historical interest. 7/10 Bethany Cox

Sinkin' in the Bathtub (1930) was the first of the Looney Tunes series. It stars Bosko, a relatively unknown cartoon character later to be eclipsed by characters such as Porky, Daffy Duck, and Bugs Bunny.

This short is derivative of the contemporary Mickey Mouse series, which was at the height of its popularity in the early 1930s. Gags such as the cow shaking its utter in disgust or the goat which accompanies Bosko to his girlfriend's home are directly taken from Disney works going as far back as Oswald the Lucky Rabbit in the late silent era.

That being said, Sinkin' in the Bathtub is a cute but not essential short. A better introduction to Bosko would be Bosko's Picture Show (1933), which is funnier and very pre-code in its sensibilities.

As an animation nut, the truly significant moments in animation history always make my heart swell and my pulse race. 'Gertie the Dinosaur' genuinely makes me tear up. So it was perhaps inevitable that I would enjoy Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising's 'Sinkin' in the Bathtub' since it is the first ever Looney Tune(not counting the short pilot film 'Bosko The Talk Ink Kid'). Animated by the great Friz Freleng, 'Sinkin' in the Bathtub' is surprisingly enjoyable on its own merits. It quickly establishes a bawdier atmosphere than previous cartoons (completely naked characters, a dance involving toilet paper, a shot of a bra and a cow with an enormous, pendulous udder) which would come to characterise Warner Bros. animation. It also establishes a sense of enormous inventiveness instantly when lead character Bosko plays his shower like a harp. The subsequent story is thin on plot (Bosko visits his girlfriend Honey and they go for a drive encountering some very mild danger) but there are plenty of funny moments, my favourite being Bosko's anthropomorphic car unexpectedly emerging for a distant shed instead of the garage. If the short ever tends towards the dull, there's always the sense of "I'm watching the first ever Looney Tune" to get you through the weak patches, Surprisingly, these are few and far between (Bosko crying after a goat eats his flowers is a little saccharine but otherwise there's little that comes to mine) and while there was still a long way to go before the recognised Warner style was achieved, 'Sinkin' in the Bathtub' is a charming start to a truly great story. Bosko's climactic intonation of the soon to be iconic phrase 'That's All Folks' will surely floor any animation fanatic.