Little Lambkin (1940) User Reviews

More gags, less Lambkin, please.

[llltdesq · 6/10 · 1 March 2015]

This is a Max Fleischer Color Classic short produced by the Fleischer studio. There will be spoilers ahead:

As is typical for a Fleischer cartoon, this is a nice looking short, with some very good visual bits and some very funny gags. The principal problem with this is that you have far too much of the title character inflicted upon you as a price for enjoying the rest of the cartoon.

Lambkin is a child-the type of little terror who makes one dream with fond hope of retroactive birth control. He's snowed his mom into thinking he still can't walk properly, yet he can move around quite well when getting into trouble. His best scenes are with a squirrel and raccoon, which take the edge off the little punk. The watermelon scenes are well done. The future inmate handles an ax smoothly.

Mom comes to retrieve her little punishment from heaven, telling him they're going to be moving, whereupon the little creep begins a massive tantrum, continuing through his arrival at the new place, where, having lost his patience, dad lays down the law.

But the future felon is undeterred, going into the kitchen and messing with the appliances, setting up the best part of the cartoon, where various automated gadgets go haywire because their plugs have been switched. Too bad they didn't trim Lambkins down to the bare minimum and give us another 30-60 seconds of the house going insane.

This short is available on DVD and is well worth getting. You may have a higher tolerance for the little "dear" than I did.

Annoying Lambkin

[TheLittleSongbird · 4/10 · 23 October 2019]

It is not as if Fleischer Studios were a terrible studio. Actually loved their early work, the best of Betty Boop, Popeye and Koko are excellent and even liked some of their "Color Classics". Some of which had innovative visuals and did amuse and charm. By 1940 however, the studio did decline significantly, 'Little Lambkin' being sadly a good example of this.

Fleischer's decline is evident in the worst of their Gabby and "Color Classics" series, s well as most of the "Stone Age" and "Animated Antics" cartoons. They were barely worth watching despite being well animated and scored. 'Little Lambkin' was made during Fleischer Studio's declining period and has pretty much all of the things that made their later work vastly inferior to their earlier work. It looks good, it sounds good and it has its too far and between moments, but there are a lot of things that are wrong with it. Of the "Color Classics" cartoons, 'Little Lambkin' is far from a classic and perhaps one of the lesser cartoons in the series. Having all the flaws of the series in general and its biggest ones are very badly executed.

Beginning with what 'Little Lambkin' does well, the best thing about it is the animation. Something that can be said for most of the series, well either being that and the music score (as will be mentioned later as another component that comes off well). Just love the vibrancy of the colours, that have a lot of atmosphere as well, and the meticulous attention to detail in the backgrounds. The music score adds so much to the action and even enhances it, on top of being sumptuously orchestrated and being full of character.

The appliances are cool and 'Little Lambkin' does start off well. The kitchen scene is amusing and is very cleverly animated with some wonderfully strange visuals to match.

'Little Lambkin' however has much wrong with it. In two particular areas, though it will be briefly said that it is a very bland cartoon, sometimes too cute and the more intended berserk moments are nowhere near insane enough and feel very anaemic. One of the biggest problems is that a vast majority of the cartoon is just not funny, there are not enough gags and other than the kitchen scene they all come over as tired and silly. The appliances are cool but they don't feature enough and later on have the same problem as the not many gags.

Even more of an issue is the titular character himself, don't be deceived by his semi-cute appearance he is as far away from likeable as one can possibly get and has to be one of the brattiest kids in animation. Very irritating and sadistic and not cute or even remotely amusing at all. The story is practically non-existent and the pace is very dull throughout.

Concluding, very mediocre with a few things done outstandingly well and they save the cartoon from being unwatchable, but the flaws outweigh them and their execution make it very difficult to like let alone enjoy. 4/10

Little Lambkin was a way below average Max Fleischer Color Classic cartoon

[tavm · 2/10 · 1 January 2009]

Just watched this rare Max Fleischer Color Classic on YouTube. The title character is a toddler boy who-when his parents are temporarily away-loves to play with animal friends, a raccoon and a squirrel. Together they eat a whole watermelon. But this day, the boy has to move to the city where he has to deal with electrical appliances. In order to move back to his previous home, this toddler proceeds to switch many electrical plugs that makes a refrigerator into a stove, etc...I've just described most of the cartoon and I'm not very impressed with the results. The watermelon sequences in the beginning and end were amusing but the chaos with the switched plugs in the city kitchen was too ridiculous even for an animated cartoon. And the boy himself was too bratty for my tastes when he constantly cried about not wanting to move. So unless you're a Max Fleischer completist, I wouldn't recommend Little Lambkin.

To quote Bobby Boucher's mother, "He's the DEVIL!!"

[planktonrules · 4/10 · 15 June 2021]

"Little Lambkin" is a Color Classic from the Fleischer Brother's studio. While it technically is in color, it appears to be using a two-color process...resulting in tones mostly reddish and blue-greenish instead of a full spectrum.

When the story begins, young 'Lambkin' is out playing with his wildlife friends in the woods. However, his parents have bought a push-button futuristic house in the city and the kid responds by screaming and pitching tantrums. Truly the child is an annoying brat. But he's precocious as well and almost instantly figures out how to re-wire the house to make everything break....and the annoying devil-child is rewarded for his misdeeds by the end of the story.

The push-button house of the future was not an uncommon theme of the 1940s and 50s...probably because such homes were featured at various World's Fairs...especially the 1939-40 one in New York. But what isn't so common is how hateful Lambkin is....and I could easily see folks hating the cartoon because he's such a nasty little brat. I think having him re-wiring the house was clever...but the screaming was too annoying. Additionally, the animation quality of this one, oddly, is below the usual standards for the studio at the time...and I'm not sure why. Overall, watchable but clearly this is one annoying little brat. If this had been toned down, it easily could have earned a 6 or 7.