None of the "Beary Family" cartoons are animated masterpieces by any stretch, some are decent, with none being exactly great, and others are horrible. Saying recently that the series generally wasn't bad was based on initial memory or having forgotten the bad quality of the worst cartoons.
'Charlie's Mother-in-Law', after two surprisingly decent first two cartoons directed by Jack Hannah, is one of the series' worst. Indicative of when the studio and Paul J. Smith were at their worst the cartoons were very weak at best, unbearable in this case. Am a big animation fan and generally very lenient, but 'Charlie's Mother-in-Law' is one of the studio's worst, is even worse than the weakest Smith-directed Chilly Willy and Woody Woodpecker cartoons and one of the worst cartoons seen by me in recent memory.
There is one saving grace. That is the music, which is energetic and lushly orchestrated, succeeding in single-handedly giving the little energy the cartoon has.
However, the animation is not good. Time and budget constraints shows in a lot of the animation, which is very rushed looking in the drawing and detail wise it's on the simplistic and careless side with colours that lack vibrancy and a fair share of goofs. The story is not much of one at all and what there is is sloppily timed and without anything surprising or imaginative, predictability is non-stop.
Unlike the previous two cartoons, 'Charlie's Mother-in-Law' is not funny. There are a lot of gags, but here they are far too noisy and chaotic, irritating for the sake of it, and are memorable for their lack of taste than their wit. The dialogue is not amusing this time round, instead it grates and that both Paul Frees and especially Grace Stafford, very talented voice actors elsewhere, are made to overact makes it even more so.
Sadly Charlie's material is too weak for him to be funny this time, while the mother-in-law character is a strong contender for the single most obnoxious character in a "Beary Family" cartoon. Mother-in-laws are often stereotyped in a negative light but this was exaggerated overkill.
In conclusion, unbearable. 1/10 Bethany Cox