Review of Gulliver's Travels

This was one of the top 20 box office films of 1939 and even garnered two Academy Award nominations for Victor Young's Best Original Musical score (losing out to The Wizard of Oz) and Best Original song, Faithful Forever (losing out to Over the Rainbow from The wizard of Oz) so it was well received by the public of it's era but it isn't Disney. Paramount released this film from the Max Fleischer animation studio with the original concept for their popular Popeye to be Gulliver. It actually might have worked better. Instead they chose to use a process that the Fleischer's, Max and Dave invented called Rotoscope where they film an actor and trace his features into animation. Sam Parker is the voice and features of Gulliver. Longtime Disney Pinto Colvig, best known as the voice of Goofy is the voice of Gabby. Colvig had left Disney in 1937 and freelanced for Warner Brothers and worked for Fleischer as the voice of Bluto until 1941 when he returned to the Disney fold. Jack Mercer who was the longtime voice of Popeye is the voice of King Little. Lanny Ross is Prince David and Jessica Dragonette is Princess Glory. I've seen this many times and have always liked it but you are a curious observer to it and not drawn into the story like you would be to a Disney animated film. The story only deals with an interpretation of the first part of Jonathan Swift's classic story Gulliver's Travels. It's a nice movie but it lacks the charm of Disney. I would give it a 7.5 out of 10.