Dave Fleischer was responsible for many gems. Ones that were amusing and charming, though over-cuteness did come through in some efforts and the stories were always pretty thin, with appealing characters, outstanding music and visuals that were inventive and with innovative animation techniques.
Ko-Ko similarly was an always amiable character to watch and among the better recurring characters in Fleischer's early work. Likewise, his series of Out of the Inkwell cartoons were among the best early efforts of Fleischer and silent cartoons in general. As said a couple of times before with other Ko-Ko cartoons, Fleischer may not be at his very finest with 'Big Chief Ko-Ko' and 'Big Chief Ko-Ko' may not be quite one of his gems. For so early on though, like most Ko-Ko cartoons, it is mighty impressive and one doesn't expect material this wild and entertaining at this stage in animation history when much later cartoons didn't do it as well, with a fair share of obvious exceptions.
'Big Chief Ko-Ko' is formulaic and Max is side-lined somewhat too much. Personally didn't have that much of a problem with the stereotyping and didn't find that objectionable.
There is very little to criticise with 'Big Chief Ko-Ko' and as has been said for other Ko-Ko cartoons everything else is done very much right and extremely well indeed.
One expects the animation to be primitive and very low quality. While Fleischer became more refined and inventive later certainly, the animation is surprisingly pretty good with some nice visual wackiness and wit. Much of 'Big Chief Ko-Ko' is lively and with a wonderfully bizarre and sharp sense of humour, even for early Fleischer, and inventiveness.
Everything here is a lot of fun and imaginatively done, while the logic is not hard at all to take at face value. Ko-Ko as always is amiable and amusing.
In summary, very nicely done yet again. 8/10 Bethany Cox