Ups 'n Downs (1931) User Reviews

Average short with a few decent gags and some cute bits

[llltdesq · 6/10 · 17 August 2006]

This short is mildly amusing, with a main premise which has been done more or less in other shorts, in some cases to far better success. I want to discuss one or two scenes to some degree, so consider this a spoiler alert:

Bosko starts out as a hot dog vendor and this actually is probably the best part of the short. His hot dogs dance on the grill and don't seem to be the slightest bit concerned that their ultimate purpose is to be eaten! One is bought by a dog who is recognized by his intended lunch and realizes that said edible is his "Sonny Boy" and they wind up walking off together to the music of the song "Sonny Boy". The short unfortunately gets quite uneven from here as Bosko takes far too long to secretly retrieve a mechanical horse from its hiding place in order to enter it into a horse race.

There's the requisite bad guy who resorts to trickery and cheating to try and get rid of Bosko and his "horse" and some cute and occasionally interesting visuals, but the ending is a bit too trite and obvious for my tastes. It could have been better, but for an early Bosko, it isn't too bad. Worth seeing at least once if you have the opportunity.

Ups 'n Downs is another interesting early Bosko short

[tavm · 5/10 · 27 October 2007]

Watched this Bosko short on YouTube and I agree with the previous poster that this was amusing and nothing more. Best sequence was indeed the hot dogs dancing without a care despite their intended purpose! The "Mammy and Sonny Boy" gag may be pretty obscure for anyone who doesn't know Al Jolson, otherwise it may be considered racist by others though in this case I don't think any real harm was meant by it. If the mouse drawn here looks a little familiar, it's because the directors, Hugh Harmon and Rudolf Ising, once drew for Walt Disney when he did Oswald the Lucky Rabbit who somewhat resembles the future mouse that would put Disney on the map of animation history. Worth a look once for anyone interested in this sort of thing.

Disjointed Plotting

[Hitchcoc · 6/10 · 2 January 2019]

Why have the whole thing with the hot dog stand, if the rest is about a horserace? We have the same bit seen so many times where the hot dogs are sentient beings, refusing to be eaten. At some point, an alarm goes off and Bosko takes off to participate in a horse race. Much of that is clever, but it is an excuse to start something that would be interesting to the audience. A pretty typical cartoon from this stable (so to speak).

Pretty typical for Bosko

[planktonrules · 3/10 · 10 May 2021]

Looney Tunes' first star was Bosko. And, if you are wondering why they don't show Bosko cartoons on TV, watch a few and you'll see. While they weren't bad for the early 1930s, the cartoons lacked the edge and humor the later Looney Tunes films had. Instead of sarcasm and laughs, the production team of Harmon-Ising emphasized cute animal characters, the repetitive use of cels to save money, singing and dancing and schmatziness. In a word, the cartoons were saccharine.

In "Ups 'n Downs", Bosko is selling anamorphic hot dogs that dance about and seem alive....another common thing in the early Harmon-Ising cartoons. Again and again, you see Bosko dancing about behind his griddle...for no apparent reason. There's also a segment where you see boxing animals training...and it has nothing to do with the rest of the cartoon. Later, there's a big horse race and Bosko enters a mechanical horse and one of the bad animals spits tobacco at him and even tosses a grenade at Bosko!! Unfortunately, Bosko survives the onslaught.

So much of this cartoon seemed random and sticking to a plot is definitely NOT something you'll see often in Bosko cartoons. This one is about typical for a 1931 cartoon but it doesn't hold up well today.

Amazing Revision of the Karnival Kid!

[VioletGirl37 · 6/10 · 11 February 2023]

As before, I was at first amazed at how blantantly this Bosko cartoon seems to rip off Disney and Ub Iwerks' Mickey Mouse cartoons, though I know that Ising did first work for Walt and probably helped to influence what came to be thought of as "the Disney cartoon style" himself. At first, this seemed to be a pretty blatant ripoff of the hot dog scene from "The Karnival Kid" (which by the way is a masterpiece and definitely the best Mickey Mouse cartoon I've seen of the era). As other reviewers pointed out, this cartoon's pacing was far from perfect, as it did have slow bits (although after watching some silent cartoons from fifteen years earlier, wow have my standards for good pacing been lowered!) It also referenced "The Jazz Singer", but even if you are like myself and didn't know the reference, I thought that scene was brilliant! Warner Brothers cartoons can often be cruel, gross, or gruesome, and yet I *loved* how this took a scene from the Karnival Kid and reimagined it with the living hot dog's humanity being recognized, and finding acceptance in a new parent! Honestly one of the most beautiful scenes I've seen in a cartoon - what a joy! I agree with the other reviewers that the horserace setting was not well established at the beginning, giving the cartoon a disjointed and confusing impression. I can see it says "RACE ____" on the back of a sport stadium in the background (probably "RACE TODAY"), but my eye was not drawn there the first time, and the print looks pretty poor quality, so I know I'm not getting the full frame and that may be contributing to my confusion. Perhaps an establishing shot could have made this clearer?

Pacing and cohesiveness could have been better, but overall a wonderful, clever, and extremely joyous and funny cartoon - the dog scene was definitely the highlight, but this cartoon got a lot more smiles and laughs out of me than average!

Ups and downs is an apt way to describe this cartoon

[TheLittleSongbird · 5/10 · 30 March 2017]

The Bosko cartoons may not be animation masterpieces, but they are fascinating as examples of Looney Tunes in their early days before the creation of more compelling characters and funnier and more creative cartoons.

None of the previous Bosko cartoons were great, most of them being hit and miss, but they were interesting and mostly quite decent. Up to this particular point in the series, 'Ups 'n Downs' isn't quite one of the weaker Bosko cartoons like 'Ain't Nature Grand' and particularly 'The Booze Hangs High' but it also doesn't have enough to make it one of the best.

Certainly there are good things about 'Ups 'n Downs'. The animation is not bad at all. Not exactly refined but fluid and crisp enough with some nice detail, it is especially good in the meticulous backgrounds and some remarkably flexible yet natural movements for Bosko. The music is one of 'Ups 'n Downs' highlight components, its infectious energy, rousing merriment, lush orchestration and how well it fits with the animation is just a joy.

'Ups 'n Downs' humour isn't consistent, but the hotdog scene is amusing and while not hilarious the Sonny Boy part is pretty harmless and anybody familiar with the likes of Al Jolson may find it intriguing. The synchronisation and sound are remarkably good, nothing being static or sloppy.

However, the humour isn't consistent as said. Other than one or two parts, the cartoon is at best mildly amusing and too often is less than that. Part of the problem is that the timing is pedestrian, with some scenes taking too long to set up, and that the story is routine to the point of painful predictability with the obligatory stock villain that is there for the sake of being a plot device and an ending that is basically an over-familiar cliché that can be seen from miles away and has been done with much more freshness elsewhere.

Bosko is bland and not particularly endearing, showing much more personality before and since 'Ups 'n Downs'.

In conclusion, a very up and down cartoon. 5/10 Bethany Cox

UPS 'N DOWNS is about an attempt to rig a horse race . . .

[oscaralbert · 6/10 · 21 December 2016]

. . . with Warner Bros. featuring the "Good" Bosko rather than his Evil Twin (who's often referred as "Bosco 2," or simply "Tabasco"). Since Warner Bros. was notorious for using its psychic Looney Tunes Animated Shorts Seers division to warn 21st Century America of its upcoming Calamities, Catastrophes, Cataclysms, and Apocalypti, it should come as no surprise that the important part of UPS 'N DOWNS--the horse race--centers around KGB Chief Vlad "The Impaler" Putin's Russian chess gambit to put in his puppet as America's White House Resident-Elect, in hopes that this would turn the USA into a Soviet Satellite State, such as Estonia and Latvia used to be. Everyone knows that Russia has NEVER been a Socialist nation like Sweden, but rather a practitioner of the Corrupt Crony Communist\Capitalist Oligarchy ear-marking the backgrounds of nearly all the Cabinet Picks announced by Putin's puppet, Rump. Putin, as Bosko's mustached rival here, throws a grenade at Our Hero in an attempt to rig the race outcome. However, Bosko simply takes over Putin's ride to save America!