Little Brown Jug

Little Brown Jug is just one of many ScreenSong animated shorts that Famous Studios released during the 1940's (the series actually started back in the early 1930's,but was phased out by Max Fleischer in the later half of the 30's,until they were brought back by Famous Studios,after the Fleischer Brothers were given their walking papers in 1943). This one features a gaggle of forest animals that produce a batch of apple cider that turns into hard cider,and gets anyone who manages to get a bellyfull of it, rip roaring drunk. Halfway through the action, the song 'Little Brown Jug' is sung (along with the famous, follow the bouncing ball,to encourage the audience to sing along). I guess my only quirk about this short is, although quite funny, it does depict drunken behavior aimed at young children (a chicken drinks some of it & lays some eggs that produce drunken baby chicks). I guess nobody really thought seriously about alcoholism much back in the 1940's,and the damage that results from it (and I'm far from being a tea totaler)

LITTLE BROWN JUG (1948) is a surprisingly enjoyable short film with a GREAT musical score. It's really enjoyable. Great for young children.

Had absolutely no idea how Famous Studios were going to successfully pull off a cartoon based around cider in screen song form. On my first watch, part of me was convinced that 'Little Brown Jug' would not work at all and that it would be one of those well animated and scored yet rather stale, humourless and too cute cartoons. As the Screen Song series from the studio is very hit and miss and there are quite a few cartoons that fit this distinction.

Was actually pleasantly surprised by 'Little Brown Jug' on first viewing. Watching it again after a while, my pleasantly surprised feelings are pretty much exactly the same but surprising me more actually was that it was even better on my last watch. 'Little Brown Jug' was an example of a cartoon that shouldn't have worked and sounded like a near-disaster, but it actually was a complete winner and easily one of the best of the Screen Song cartoons.

Although the story is barely there and structurally a series of gags, this actually didn't matter as much as it did in other Screen Song cartoons. Because the energy was so uplifting and infectious and because the material worked so much better than it should have.

'Little Brown Jug' is beautifully animated. The colours are vibrant and there is meticulous attention to detail in the backgrounds, there have also not been many occasions where ways of getting drunk on cider is so visually creative. If there was one aspect that was consistently good in Famous Studios' 1940s and 1950s output, it was the music scoring and it is outstanding here in 'Little Brown Jug'. The orchestration has a lot of energy and there are some truly luscious sounds throughout. The song here is also called "Little Brown Jug", that is a catchy song that doesn't become too much of an annoying earworm.

The gag count is a good deal higher than one usually finds in Famous Studios' Screen Song cartoons and all of them are very funny and the best, like with the drunken chicken, surprisingly creative. Screen Song series and creative usually do not go in the same sentence so it was great to see evidence that the series was capable of it. The story may be thin but the cartoon sure isn't thin on the energy factor, which is very spirited and sometimes endearingly strange. The animals are some of the most personality filled characters of the whole series, while there may not be much original about them there is nothing bland about them.

Summing up, great and one of the series' best. 9/10