It's Got Me Again!

After so many years of seeing this early Warner Bros. Merrie Melodies cartoon short listed among the Oscar nominees for Best Short Subject-Cartoon/Animated in Leonard Maltin's book "Of Mice and Magic", I finally got to see this on YouTube. This was the first entry from the studio whose initials were trademarked as a shield that got an Academy Award nomination (It lost to Disney's Flowers and Trees). It concerned various mice who at night dance and play music until a cat threatens to spoil their fun. Quite entertaining musically with some amusing gags near the end when they attempt to chase away the cat. I especially like the creative way the mice used the record needle as a machine gun. If there's one caveat, it's that in many scenes the mice's faces look like Disney's Mickey. I've said a few times that because the directors-Hugh Harmon and Rudolf Ising-once worked for Uncle Walt during the Alice and Oswald days that they probably got that look by osmosis. Some have accused me of spreading lies since it's well known that Ub Iwerks created the famous mouse after Harmon-Ising left Disney. Maybe so, still I stand by my assumption that Hugh and Rudy probably drew the mice that way simply because Oswald looked similar when they worked on him. Having said all that, I'll just now say judge for yourself when you watch It's Got Me Again! on YouTube. P.S. While I've also seen Hold Everything, I didn't know of any similarities since it's been almost two years since I watched that and reviewed it here on IMDb.

It's Got Me Again! (1932)

*** 1/2 (out of 4)

Oscar-nominated short has various mice singing and dancing but the mood changes when an angry cat shows up. I'm somewhat surprised Disney didn't go after this film because the mice certainly share a resemblance to Mickey Mouse. With that said, this is a very fast paced and funny film that has some great animation. The song and dance numbers are all pretty good and the cat is a great villain. This is also a pretty dark film so it might scare some of the kids watching.

Turner Classic Movies shows this quite often.

This is an early (1932) attempt to have a cartoon in which the animated figures react to music. In other words, all their movement, from individual steps to slapstick-type stuff, all coincides with the music. In the '40s several cartoons won awards for this sort of thing, ones that feature Tom and Jerry or Bugs Bunny.

This one wasn't advanced enough to have that cleverness and color that we saw in the next decade, but for a 1932 effort this is passable. Just don't expect to get any laughs out of it. It still has some entertainment value, however, and all these little miniature Mickey Mouse- lookalike mice are "cute."

The "story" is just a bunch of mice enjoying a record, jumping on top of the vinyl disc as it goes around on the record player. Later, some of them play the flute and jump up and down on the drums. The second half offers some humor as one of the little mice falls into a spittoon

I did think Al Jolson imitation near the end was pretty good. Also, instead of "That's all, folks," the ending was "So long, folks!"

I saw this on the Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume Three. It was one of the "From The Vault" features on disc two.

While the mice in this animated short don't act like Mickey, they sure look like him. Some say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery...to me it just seems like a cheap attempt by Looney Tunes to ripoff the Mouse! Like the early Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies animated shorts, this one was supervised by the (uggh) team of Harmon and Ising--whose cutesy style was really big during the 30s and early 40s. While popular at the time, today their cartoons for Merrie Melodies and MGM look, well, pretty dreadful. It isn't that the animation is so bad, but the stories are just so saccharine and lack any of the edge later cartoons would have. Fortunately, for a Harmon/Ising production, this is among the least cutesy of their cartoons. Now this isn't saying it's good, because it really isn't. I only gave this film a 5 because relative to other films of the day, it was pretty average--though significantly less interesting than a real Mickey Mouse cartoon of the day.

The film consists of a raspy cat trying to kill the poor mice and, naturally, the mice prevailing (I bet you didn't see THAT coming, huh?!). In addition, there is some singing at the end because I think Harmon/Ising were contractually obligated to irritate the audiences with these awful songs.

Of interest to film historians (after all, this film was somehow nominated for an Oscar) and masochistic film viewers who like painfully unfunny cartoons.

Frank Marsales gives us a little lively instrumental of "Get Happy" before we are introduced to some squeaking mice who like to come out to play after midnight has struck on their clock. They are in a music room with it's wind-up gramophone to which they all - and there are millions of them - dance. Then they have a go on the drum, the accordion, practise some military precision marching. One even has a go on the French horn though, and that's their mistake. It disturbs the cat outside in the rain! Still obliviously mucking about on the piano, their feline foe is figuring a way to get into that room! Job done, a late supper beckons - can the mice escape his claws? Luckily the cat's aim is pretty rubbish but it's still risky for one singing mouse whose friends must come to his rescue! Drumsticks, needles and even a blow torch - what chance has the poor moggy? It's quite a fun animation this with some characters amongst the mice - even one on a crutch, but the story isn't really up to much and the general cacophony doesn't really stand out. It's watchable, but you'll never remember it.