User Reviews

One major misconception of "Steamboat Willie" is that it was the first animated cartoon with synchronized sound. Actually Paul Terry's "Dinner Time" contained a soundtrack with music and special sound effects heard on the screen three months before Mickey's. The six-minute cartoon premiered at New York City's Strand Theater in August 1928 and received a nationwide distribution on October 1928. "Dinner Time," centers on Farmer Al Falfa as a butcher who has to beat back a pack of hungry domestic dogs milling around his shop smelling big chunks of meat. It was one in a series of producer Amadee J. Van Beuren's Aesop's Fables. Terry's producer pushed the director to have the film accompanied by a soundtrack, which the director reluctantly did.

Mickey Mouse's first sound cartoon gets all the credit for being the trailblazer since it became far more popular and profitable than "Dinner Time." The irony of the audible technology with animation is that Terry and Van Beuren were at loggerheads about sound, with the producer all in favor of it while the director was skeptical. The two ended their partnership over the issue, giving Terry the freedom to develop his highly successful Terrytoons-with sound.

Many times I have heard various sources credit Disney's "Steamboat Willie" as being the first cartoon with synchronized sound. This actually is not true, as several cartoons preceded it...including "Dinner Time" which came out a month before "Steamboat Willie".

In some ways, "Dinner Time" is impressive. Not only because it came out before the Disney film but because it used a more advanced sort of sound system than Warner Brothers used in "The Jazz Singer" and its Vitaphone shorts. The Warner films all had their sound on a record and this was very problematic. Synchonizing the record to the film was not easy and the records wore out after only a half dozen times! WIth "Dinner Time" the sound was placed on the film itself...much like we do it today. Unfortunately, the sound quality and sound effects are pretty poor.

There isn't a ton of plot in this Van Buren Studios film...and although it's called an "Aesop's Fables" installment, the only instance which MIGHT have been from Aesop is a scene that lasts about 10 seconds--where a dog with a bone barks at its own reflection and loses the bone in a lake. The rest mostly consist of dogs running amok in a butcher shop as the idiot dog catcher is trying in vain to stop them.

Mildly entertaining at best, often the sound effects are just awful--either missing entirely when they should be there or being too loud and cheap when they are. Indifferently made but STILL a groundbreaking film in the history of sound cartoons. As such, it's well worth seeing to film historians and the like.

The first sound cartoon - beating Steamboat Willie by a month, but released after Disney's film - is a typical '20s animation. Amusing enough, but nothing special.

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.

'Dinner Time' is notable for being the first Aesop's Fables cartoon (succeeding Paul Terry's Aesop's Film Fables series), Terry's first synchronised sound cartoon and for being one of the earliest synchronised sound cartoons overall. So it is of historical interest. The problem is that 'Dinner Time' to me was also not particularly good, there is certainly worse in the Aesop's Fables series but also far better.

There are good things. Its best asset, as is the case for pretty much all of Van Beuren cartoons, is the music score. It is typically peppy and great fun to listen to. It is so beautifully and cleverly orchestrated and full of lively energy, doing so well with enhancing the action.

A couple of gags are amusing and some of the synchronisation and sound are reasonably neat.

However, am also in agreement with Walt Disney about 'Dinner Time' being basically a noise of music and sound. They are done well, even if it was toned down a little and used a little less. It just all comes at the expense at having any decent gags and a succinct story.

As said, a couple of gags work but the others are just too disconnected and disorganised with nothing to them. The story is too hectic pace-wise, is often indistinguishable and doesn't make any sense. There is nothing memorable or engaging about the characters, who are immediately forgettable as soon as the cartoon is over. Other parts of the synchronisation is sloppy and an ill-match with everything else, a sign of the technique not being refined yet. 'Steamboat Willie', which came out later than this, did it much better.

In conclusion, interesting historically but the quality is lacking. 4/10 Bethany Cox