Toby Tortoise Returns (1936) User Reviews

OK Sequel to Tortoise and the Hare

[OllieSuave-007 · 6/10 · 6 June 2018]

This sequel to the Tortoise and the Hare is a little amusing - a very nice throwback to the previous story.

The two animals takes boxing to a whole new level and the cartoon has some special cameos from past Silly Symphony characters. However, I think the Tortoise and the Hare take the sport a little too over-the-top, in the league of the over-imagination of the anti-wolf machines in the Three Little Pigs sequels.

Crazy stuff here, but definitely doesn't surprise the original story.

Grade C+

Mildly enjoyable but wonderfully animated.

[planktonrules · 7/10 · 17 January 2014]

One thing you can say about the Disney shorts from the 1930s is that they were artistically the best cartoons available. So, even if the plots were occasionally limp (especially with their all-singing cartoons), the art work is still very, very impressive. "Toby Tortoise Returns" is beautifully animated. The colors are very vibrant and the backgrounds lovely.

The story picks up after the story of "The Tortoise and the Hare" (also a prior Disney cartoon). The same characters are now involved in a boxing match. Toby is fighting against 'Max Hare' (a play on the name of the champion Max Baer). And, while Max cheats and the odds are clearly against Toby, the ending is pretty much what you'd expect. As for the rest, the cartoon is only fair but I did enjoy seeing it for all the Disney character cameos--such as the industrious pig from "The Three Little Pigs", Donald and Goofy. There also are characters that are caricatures of Mae West and Harpo Marx. The cartoon is more interesting than funny but is still worth your time.

However regular...

[RosanaBotafogo · 6/10 · 6 July 2021]

Despite being based on my favorite fable, of Aesop, the return was not that much, even more exaggerated, almost violent, it could be suppressed, which would not be missed, far from the first, however regular...

Toby Tortoise Returns is a very hilarious sequel to The Tortoise and the Hare

[tavm · 10/10 · 31 December 2008]

After watching The Tortoise and the Hare on YouTube, I quickly watched the sequel right after on there and I found this one more hilarious than the predecessor. Actually, I thought Toby Tortoise Returns was very funny while TTATH was only amusing. Especially since the competition is now in the boxing ring and there are cameos from other stars of other Walt Disney Silly Symphonies cartoons. I was especially very amused by the Mae West bird caricature Jenny Wren and the Harpo Marx rooster (whose hair is red as opposed to the more familiar blonde) from Who Killed Cock Robin? (whose scenes I'm familiar with from seeing them in Alfred Hitchcock's Sabotage) There's dynamite, Mexican music, a couple of hospital orderlies, and plenty other hilarious stuff that I don't want to spoil for you. Needless to say, I very much recommend Toby Tortoise Returns.

Rather boring

[CuriosityKilledShawn · 4/10 · 1 September 2013]

Toby Tortoise is back dueling with the hare. But this time they are not racing, but boxing. As you would expect Toby is slow and incapable while the hare is loud and overconfident. It's quite uneventful and boring for the most part. Toby is not a good character as his cartoons move as slow as he does.

I'm not sure what kind of boxing match allows the various forms of humiliation and torture used by the hare, but one of gags involves fireworks and backfires on him, thus allowing Toby to win by default.

Subliming message of the cartoon: if you lack the skill to win honestly - cheat.

Disney's Tortoise Versus Hare, Round Two

[Ron Oliver · 10/10 · 20 October 2000]

A Walt Disney SILLY SYMPHONY Cartoon Short.

TOBY TORTOISE RETURNS to compete once more with Max Hare, this time in the boxing ring. What's needed now is some fancy footwork, but all Toby has to offer is 'slow and steady'...

This little film, a follow-up to THE TORTOISE AND THE HARE (1935), is enjoyable & entertaining, but not on the same stylistic level as its Oscar-winning predecessor. Several characters from other SILLY SYMPHONIES make cameo appearances, including the Three Little Pigs and Jenny Wren.

The SILLY SYMPHONIES, which Walt Disney produced for a ten year period beginning in 1929, are among the most fascinating of all animated series. Unlike the Mickey Mouse cartoons in which action was paramount, with the Symphonies the action was made to fit the music. There was little plot in the early Symphonies, which featured lively inanimate objects and anthropomorphic plants & animals, all moving frantically to the soundtrack. Gradually, however, the Symphonies became the school where Walt's animators learned to work with color and began to experiment with plot, characterization & photographic special effects. The pages of Fable & Fairy Tale, Myth & Mother Goose were all mined to provide story lines and even Hollywood's musicals & celebrities were effectively spoofed. It was from this rich soil that Disney's feature-length animation was to spring. In 1939, with SNOW WHITE successfully behind him and PINOCCHIO & FANTASIA on the near horizon, Walt phased out the SILLY SYMPHONIES; they had run their course & served their purpose.

Some stand on the shoulders of giants; others have to make do with gnomes . . .

[pixrox1 · 5/10 · 2 October 2017]

. . . which was certainly the case in the 1900s when Warner Bros. was forced to create a Looney Tunes Department to save America from its Great Depression brought on by such unsavory Disney cartoon fare as TOBY TORTOISE RETURNS. Comparing ANY Looney Tune with Trash like TOBY is akin to juxtaposing a three-year-old's finger painting against Vincent van Gogh's "Starry, Starry Night." Lacking any semblance of nuance, TOBY will strike any viewer who's enjoyed Bugs Bunny's tussles with the tortoise as a scribbled two-dimensional stick figure. As is the case with most Disney offerings of this "Silly Symphony" ilk, everything about TOBY seems cheap, static, repetitive, and totally lacking in vision. It's as if Old Walt ordered each of his animators to write "I will NOT have an original thought" 100 times on a blackboard! Some people (like the creators of SOUTH PARK and THE SIMPSONS) obviously grew up on Looney Tunes. It's safe to say that the Proliferators of BARNEY and TELETUBBIES were weaned on Disney's "Silly Symphonies"!

"Jenny Wren" is somehow involved in the action of this . . .

[cricket30 · 8/10 · 14 October 2021]

. . . brief cartoon, TOBY TORTOISE RETURNS. A send-up of Real Life actress Mae West, Jenny's appearance in a tale involving a tortoise and a hare is somewhat incongruous. The title character, with his body armor, IS perfectly analogous to Germany's Blitzkrieg Boys, about to overrun Europe as they launched a World War destined to kill tens of millions. Opposing this lethal turtle in the boxing ring is "Max Hare," a blatant caricature of Real Life hero pugilist Max Baer, beloved especially by Jewish citizens for smashing the Fuhrer's mouthpiece Schmeling in Yankee Stadium to cut short the latter's U. S. propaganda tour. Joining the treasonous Gopher Odd Party and its private mendacious groaning fat cat one per center film studio, TOBY TORTOISE RETURNS' producer similarly sides with the Freedom-squelching Prussians here against Hare\Baer and all Americans of a Patriotic Mind. Unable to fight Max fair and square, terrible reptile Toby resorts to illegal fireworks to "win" a hollow triumph, just as The Fuhrer would soon resort to V1, V2 and other war crime buzz rockets to violate every Law of Humanity.

Not good

[belubocesban · 3/10 · 19 December 2020]

This short movie is so bad. The originals is very better

Toby Tortoise returns in a sequel in a sequel just as good as The Tortoise and the Hare

[TheLittleSongbird · 9/10 · 11 June 2012]

I have always loved Disney Silly Symphonies, and I always found The Tortoise and the Hare to be one of their best. Toby Tortoise Returns is just as great. The animation doesn't quite have the stylistic touches of Tortoise and the Hare, but is still of the colourful and fluid quality, and the music has much energy and helps to enhance the action. The story is interesting and constantly entertains whether you are a boxing fan or not, and of the scenes making up Toby Tortoise Returns the standouts were Toby's dream sequence showing Jenny Wren lookalikes, showing what Toby would rather be doing instead, and the gag where Max Hare(still a conceited bully) puts the fireworks in Toby's shell and it backfires. Toby Tortoise Returns is also worth watching not just for Max and Toby's contrasting personalities but also the cameos the Mae West caricature of Jenny Wren(from Who Killed Cock Robin?), the Three Little Pigs and the ambulance driver from Pluto's Judgement Day. The referee reminds me very much of Droopy Dog. Overall, just as good a sequel to one of Disney's best. 9/10 Bethany Cox

The tortoise wins again

[flaviomarcelo · 5/10 · 4 October 2022]

The return of the tortoise Toby is the 61st of Silly Symphony, it is about a fight this time in a boxing ring where the hare and the tortoise will face each other again where at the beginning the hare as always has the advantage and is confident again that he is going to beat the tortoise, but again things go wrong because he does everything possible so that the tortoise loses but since there is no evil in the tortoise then he beats him again and sends him to the hospital with the help of the fireworks that the hare itself places in its shell.

Moral: The same as the previous version of him that we should not trust appearances because we can get a big surprise in life.

Conclusion: I felt this short film too repetitive to the other one that was better, the plot is very predictable I know it is a short film but really seeing the same thing is already a bit boring, I thought I was going to see more conflicts or that I was going to leave us another moral time but the only thing that changed I think is that they added a love interest to the turtle so that he can motivate himself and win. After all the tortoise had to win.