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Reviews
The Office Boy (1930)
Incredibly inept
One of a number of Mickey Mouse rip-off cartoons made at the time of the Disney's character's initial popularity explosion. Contrary to the reviewer from 2011, I found the art amateurish and unintentionally grotesque, the pacing purely haphazard, the gags perfunctory and crudely executed and the music largely the same percussive bops accompanying every conceivable type of action. There are many cheaply-made cartoons from this period - including others from Van Beuren - that are imaginative, even surreal, frequently hilarious and whose execution possesses a naive charm. This isn't one of them. Every aspect of it reeks of mediocrity at best. The only entertainment value comes from pondering the audacity of such a blatant attempted rip-off of the Mickey Mouse appearance.
Movieland Magic (1946)
Not entirely recycled
Thank you to Leslie Howard Adams' who, in his 2006 review, usefully identifies much of the recycled footage from previous Technicolor Warner studio tour shorts. Just having watched it (it's a bonus feature on the Bette Davis "Deception" DVD), I can say that there actually is some newly- shot material. At about the halfway point (5:18 to be precise), the narrator turns us over to "our musical messengers" led by a tour guide who's none other than a very young Mel Tormé. At the time, he was a Warner Bros. contract player, having signed in 1944. In this short, most of his lines are in rhyming dialog, but he does sing briefly before the final (recycled) segment. A very brief (don't blink) bit: when he's pointing out a scene with Dennis Morgan and Fuzzy Knight, he momentarily scrunches up his face into a perfect Fuzzy Knight impression.
One, Two, Three (1961)
Buyer be advised
In a comment dated 8 July 2009 under the heading "Buyer Beware" the following was said: "The MGM DVD pictured on the IMDb page for this film is a disaster, formatted to fit your screen. Somewhere in heaven Wilder must be shedding tears." The copy I just bought has the widescreen 16X9 enhanced version on one side and the pan-and-scan "full screen" version on the other. If you're seeing the "full screen" version but wish to watch the widescreen version instead, do the following:
1. Eject the disc from your player
2. Remove the disc from the tray
3. Turn the disc over
4. Replace disc in the tray
5. Press "play"
There. That ought to have gotten me past the 10 line IMDb comment requirement