User Reviews

One of half a dozen movie cartoon's based on Soglow's "Little King" panel comic strip. These are among the best cartoons that Van Beuren turned out. Soglow did the writing and the simple black & white drawing that was in favor at Van Beuren matches Soglow's style and the strip was silent, which works well. Unhappily, there are only a few of these and none are in color.

Some of the jokes are standard cartoon jokes, but the good ones are about the Little King and his desire to not have to deal with the boring rituals of being royalty. Fortunately, there's always a hot dog vendor or mermaid around when you want one....

Van Beuren cartoons are extremely variable, especially in the number of gags and whether the absurdist humour shines through enough (sometimes it does, other times it doesn't), but are strangely interesting. Although they are often poorly animated with barely existent stories and less than compelling lead characters, they are also often outstandingly scored, there can be some fun support characters and some are well-timed and amusing.

'Jest of Honour' is the seventh of eleven Van Beuren cartoons based on Otto Soglow, and the fifth to star The Little King. For me, it's among the better ones and one of the closer The Little King cartoons to be true to Soglow's humour and visual style that wasn't quite as apparent in the previous four The Little King cartoons (but so in the Sentinel Louey cartoons, 'A.M to P.M' and 'A Dizzy Day').

It's flimsy in story, not unexpected in a The Little King cartoon and the material is fairly standard and slightly lacks the charm of the first two Van Beuren/Soglow cartoons with Sentinel Louey.

Actually though, there is a huge amount to like about 'Jest of Honour' and it vastly outweighs the flaws. It demonstrates why Van Beuren's cartoons adapted from Soglow's work are among the studio's better, more ambitious and more entertaining efforts.

One expects Van Beuren cartoons to generally not be well animated. That's not the case with 'Jest of Honour', the studio's Soglow adaptations come to think of it were all among their better-looking cartoons and showed more detail and crispness. It may not quite be as imaginative visually and have the ambitious human character designs of 'The Fatal Note', which introduces The Little King, but for Van Beuren this animation is surprisingly good.

Music as always with Van Beuren, very nearly always the best thing about their cartoons and sometimes the only good thing, is lively and beautifully and cleverly orchestrated. The gags are amusing, well-timed and charming, if not quite as subtle as in the first two Van Beuren/Soglow cartoons. The Little King is appealing as a lead.

Overall, pretty good. 7/10 Bethany Cox