Camera Bug

In the copy I saw of this cartoon on the Cartoon Research site, the snake was mostly the color of Silly Putty. In all probability, the print had faded in that mildly disgusting manner that the chemical dyes used in then-current color film did. Earlier Technicolor prints did not fade; the dyes used for Technicolor were derived from plants, much more stable. If you can find a print from 1950 that isn't battered from repeated showings, it is beautiful. Cartoons from a quarter century later are ugly.

In many ways that's a metaphor for what happened to cartoons. This cartoon is one of a series produced to fill out a contract with United Artists. I never saw one in a movie theater. It was a job for the people involved, something intended to put some money in the pockets of people Friz Freleng had worked with for decades. The story is about the Blue Racer in Japan, and his interactions with a picture-taking insect in Japan. The insect speaks like Benny Rubin doing Joe Jitsu on the Dick Tracy Show. It's dull, it's sad and you can skip this one.

DePatie-Freleng Enterprises did do some good theatrical series, namely Pink Panther (the 60s output), The Inspector and the Ant and the Aardvark. The Blue Racer series however is one of the ones that never did do much for me, not everything is bad and a few of the cartoons are watchable but most of the cartoons are lacklustre and its worst components (i.e. The beetle) are awful. Am not saying this with pleasure, being a big animation fan and seeing as the studio did do some great cartoons.

'Camera Bug' is another one of the barely average outings of not just the Blue Racer series but also of any of DePatie-Freleng Enterprises' output. It has its good things and good moments, but only about two components are great and most are executed in a lacklustre and in a couple of cases bad way. While there are worse cartoons out there than 'Camera Bug', it is not a good representation of the studio and one would not think that the studio were capable of good work, and one can see actually from the best of Pink Panther, The Inspector and Ant and the Aardvark that they absolutely can.

Not everything is bad here. The best aspect is the music score, which the series had in common in fact. Regular composer for the company Doug Goodwin provides a lot of much needed colour and vim to his score that sadly is not present in nearly everything else. Close behind is the fun opening credits sequence. There is some nice character animation for Blue Racer.

Larry D. Mann continues to bring back more of the craftiness that was heard in the Tijuana Toads cartoon 'Snake in the Gracias'. Did like the talking about tobasco exchange and there were some nice inventive visuals at the end.

Most of the animation is scrappy in drawing and flatly coloured, taking abstract to overly-simple extremes so that it looks unfinished. Blue Racer was better as a supporting character in 'Snake in the Gracias', his personality in his own series is rather one-note and is not that distinct. Worse is the distasteful stereotype that is the beetle (think Mickey Rooney in 'Breakfast at Tiffany's' in beetle form and that's pretty much the character), and he is also incredibly annoying and pretty much ruins the cartoon as soon as he appears. The voice acting for the character is very broad and stereotypical, Tom Holland's attempts at broken English is rather embarrassing.

Writing generates very little spark and only has some amusing lines at the beginning and too many dumb ones with the beetle. The gags (which are not many) are not original and are nothing special or particularly funny, the taking the picture in the cave gag goes on for too long and something you'd find in Looney Tunes past prime. No surprises going on in the pretty threadbare story, which is merely a small series of gags and lots of corny and at times incomprehensible dialogue (most of it from the beetle) revolving around the same formula the previous Blue Racer cartoons followed.

Concluding, barely average. 5/10.