Hobo Bobo (1947) User Reviews

Weird Looney Tune take on DUMBO

[wilhelmurg · 7/10 · 4 August 2014]

Here we are 6 years after DUMBO with McKimson trying to be sweet like Disney, yet with a Looney Tunes edge and ultimately failing at it. (It seems like Chuck Jones might have been a better choice as a director). It is interesting that the Minah Bird (a Jones character from the "Inky" cartoons) is involved without Inky; this would have been the character's penultimate appearance in the Golden age of Looney Tunes. The voices are by Mel Blanc and Robert C. Bruce (the narration voice for the Looney Tunes)and a young Stan Freberg as Bobo. I also don't remember this one playing very often; it's an odd little one-shot, amusing, but not essential when compared to the other cartoons McKimson did at the times, like the two cartoons that preceded it, ONE MEAT BRAWL, which introduced Foghorn Leghorn, Henery Hawk, and the Barnyard Dog to the world, and the Daffy Duck Classic BIRTH OF A NOTION.

Too reminiscent of "Dumbo"

[archiveguy · 6/10 · 22 October 2000]

Maybe a little too reminiscent of "Dumbo" (cute baby elephant; advice from bird; circus setting; pink elephant gag) to be judged on its own merits, the best thing is the voiceover narrator who manages to get in a few ironic jabs. The stowaway gags are OK, too.

"There was even talk of a certain chair . . . "

[oscaralbert · 8/10 · 7 October 2017]

. . . ominously intones HOBO BOBO narrator Robert C. Bruce about six and a quarter minutes into this prophetic brief cartoon from Warner Bros.' crack team of Futuristic Prognosticators, their famed Animated Shorts Seers division (aka, The Looney Tuners). Bruce's comment is in clear reference to Old Tom Edison's infamous Real Life Short, ELECTROCUTING AN ELEPHANT, in which Coney Island's beloved Topsy is sadistically fried alive as a huge crowd of male spectators gleefully savor her fragrantly boiling body juices and her forlorn Death Shrieks. WHY would Mr. Bruce dredge up this National Trauma in what was ostensibly a "Kiddie Toon" for contemporary audiences? Because HOBO BOBO's message was aimed over these folks heads, directly at We Americans of (The Then) Far Future. When Bob says after six minutes "Bobo was arrested, like a common criminal--the Shame of it!!" he's clearly referring to the current Standard Bearer for America's Pachyderm Party, Red Commie KGB Chief Vlad "The Mad Russian" Putin's White House Sock Puppet-in-Chief, Don Juan Rump. Warner obviously is warning America here of the imminent arrest and execution of ALL the Ringleaders of the traitorous Bannon\Paddock Machine-Gunning Fifth Column Fat Cat Repug Party for High Treason. As the wooden carts fill with Quislings such as Rump, his Money Laundering Adviser J. Kushner, his crass "Buy My Stuff" daughter Iwanna Rump, Putin's long-time spy Melancholia Rump, Putin's KKK Attorney General Beauregard Sessions, Putin's Secretary of State Rex "Exxon Valdez" Tillerson, Putin's Secretary of Miseducation Betsy "Amway Calling" DeVos; Putin's Chief of Environmental Pollution Scott "Ruin It" Pruitt and so forth, America's scant supply of lethal injection drugs will be swiftly exhausted. Warner is suggesting that if confiscating ALL the assets of EVERY Corrupt Commie "Conservative" Job-Killing Corporate Bigshot through our Civil Forfeiture Laws is not enough to pay off the National Debt that they've run up, following Old "Burn 'Em Alive!" Tom Edison's example of charging admission for Mass Public Electrocutions could well make up the difference. (Now that Ringling Bros. bit the dust this summer, a hungry nation is totally starved for circuses, HOBO BOBO's final moments reveal.)