Van Bueren Studios' Cubby the Bear series comprised of just 17 cartoons made between 1933-1934. As much as it pains me to say it, speaking as a big animation fan, it is not hard to see why the character and the series weren't so popular and didn't last long.
'Opening Night' is the first Cubby the Bear cartoon and while it is not one of the worst cartoons of the series it's not particularly good either. There are far better opera-based cartoons around, with much better animation, much funnier material and much better characters and protagonists. There are plus points here. The best thing about it, and this is true of a lot of Van Bueren's output, is the music score.
It is so beautifully and cleverly orchestrated and full of lively energy that is sorely lacking elsewhere, doing so well with enhancing the action. The Italian opera snippets are seamlessly arranged and inserted.
The opening scene is quite nice, pretty charming and it boasts the best visuals of the entire cartoon. It was interesting to see some surprisingly risqué elements that makes one shocked how they got past the censors, back when the Production Code had not yet been enforced and some cartoons weren't as tame as they became (see the difference for example between the pre and post Code Betty Boop cartoons). The audience seats gags evoked a wry smile.
However, outside of the opening, the animation is really not good even for a cartoon not made on a high budget, and it is true for the Cubby the Bear series and Van Bueren in general on the whole. It's static in movement, simplistic in background detail and sloppy in drawing, with the character expressions being pretty expressionless. Another major problem is Cubby himself, on top of being poorly animated he is one of the blandest, most personality-deprived and most motivation-less characters ever to exist.
Generally, 'Opening Night' is not funny. The risqué elements and audience seats gags aside, there are too few to begin with and what there is is mostly not very well timed and very uninspired and lacking in variety. It's a dull cartoon pace-wise and the story is practically non-existent, doesn't even try to make sense (not unusual for Van Bueren but rarely to this extent) and often doesn't go anywhere. Then we have a very melodramatic and fairly brutal fight scene that feels out-of-kilter within the rest of the cartoon.
To conclude, a somewhat interesting but uninspired and not particularly well made debut for an unsurprisingly short-lived character. 4/10 Bethany Cox