User Reviews

"Singing as we roll along, life is just a merry song"... Hmmm, well a wagon train of rather musically adept travellers is merrily "never hurrying, never worrying" until they settle down for the night in front of a fire to some great violin music that accompanies a contemporary dance. Unfortunately, they are spotted by a flying bat who returns to his cave where they decide that "as an entrée they would be very nice". The gypsies must now flee for their very lives with the young girl in greatest peril until, well of course the whole cartoon is about her would-be saviour. Even if he really only does put in an appearance at the end where, accompanied by some lightly operatic rhyming couplets, "Mighty Mouse" tries to save the day in best thwack and pow fashion. It's watchable, and some of the singing isn't half bad, but in the end I actually felt quiet sorry for the alligator.

Can totally understand why anybody wouldn't care for the Mighty Mouse cartoons, don't care for a fair share of them myself personally. It is a very formulaic series, that got increasingly repetitive even early on, and too many of the cartoons are too cute and lacking in tension and laughs (even when the adversaries are nearly always the most interesting characters). Mighty Mouse himself is watchable but pretty one-dimensional and is not always used well.

1945 was a very prolific year for Mighty Mouse. It was also another pretty inconsistent year for him, though not as much as the previous year that featured two of his worst cartoons 'The Two Barbers' and 'At the Circus'. None of his cartoons from 1945 were thankfully on their level, lesser ones such as 'Raiding the Raiders' still managed to be at least okay, though none fit my definition of great. 'Gypsy Life' though comes close and do agree that it is one of the best of the whole series. Even non-fans of the series and characters are likely to find themselves pleasantly surprised.

Best asset as ever is the music, which is its usual lush and characterful self. Also excelling in enhancing everything going on between the cats and mice. The animation is equally great in quality, especially the backgrounds and landscapes, though the colours are also very attractive and never drab or garish.

While nothing is completely hilarious, there is hardly a shortage of gags and they amuse if more in the second half, some of them are remarkably creative by the series' standards. There is also a genuine sense of threat courtesy of the bats, without being too dark or too sinister. The story may be slight and predictable, but it engages and charms at least. Mighty Mouse is much better used than a lot of his previous cartoons, feeling more of a lead rather than glorified supporting character, and found myself admiring his courage and willingness to help.

However, there are few surprises here and the events are very formulaic and easy to figure out, the second half being fairly more of the same.

It does start off a little slow and would have liked a little more compelling personalities for the mice.

Overall, for this early stage of the series and the series overall this was quite well done. 7/10

HAVING FOLLOWED THE format of a sort of cartoon short operetta, GYPSY LIFE conformed to the style set long prior to this time for the cartoon's star, MIGHTY MOUSE. This highly stylized way of doing an eight to ten minutes of cartoon story took a finely tuned coordination between writers, voice actors, animators and the music department.

ADDED TO THE usual trappings of a MIGHTY MOUSE vehicle, which always had sympathetic anthropomorphic rodents (with very 'attractive' female mice), a crisis situation and some monster-type, blood-thirsty cats; was the element of being "Gypsy." Colorful, baggy clothes, gaudy color matching, scarves, bandannas, violins and tambourines were all the order of the day.

WE CAN RECALL seeing in this cartoon a 'gypsy' dog, marching along in perfect time to the main song "Gypsy Life"; all the while maintaining perfect rhythm by beating the tambourine against his sides while holding it with his tail! Well, you had to see it, Schultz!

IT HAS BEEN said that cartoons from the production company, Paul Terry's Terrytoons, had the dubious distinction of looking so much alike; be they either made in the 1930's or 1950's. HECKLE & JECKLE, DINKY DUCK, GANDY GOOSE as well as latter day FARMER AL FALFA cartoons all seem to support this hypothesis.

BUT THOSE OPERETTA like MIGHTY MOUSE cartoons are the obvious exception to this rule. And none is a finer example than GYPSY LIFE.

Reportedly, this is the only Mighty Mouse cartoon to be nominated for an Academy Award. I fail to see why it deserved the honor. The first Mighty Mouse short--before the super-rodent was even named Mighty Mouse--"The Mouse of Tomorrow" (1941) at least had a couple jokes based on parodying the cartoon "Superman" (1941) and the pun of becoming super via a supermarket. What's the appeal here? Some inconsistent singing that turns operatic?

Otherwise, there are some nomadic mice depicted as stereotypical gypsies. They are attacked by giant bats. You know that the Roma are the good guys because they wear clothes, and the bats are cartoon coded as evil because they're nudists. To the rescue comes another flying, but also costumed, mouse. No longer a Superman burlesque, Mighty Mouse was his own thing by now. And it's quite bland. It's a film that manages to elicit hardly a response from me. It may've been of some interest had they done something with the bats, such as making them vampires to imitate classic horror films. Or better yet, had they made a parody of Batman, so that we could see Bat-Mouse v Super-Mouse.

At the risk of sounding heretical, I've always found the character of Mighty Mouse rather bland and, wel, boring. This short is actually rather creative and one of the better entries in the series. It was nominated for an Academy Award and has fairly good music and the production values may just be a hair better than typical Paul Terry standards. Check it out if you can find it anywhere. Worth watching.