This Terrytoon from 1945 is most remarkable for the amount of looping that goes on. I'd estimate that you could cut out a third of the movie without losing a single shot.
Looping -- that's when an action sequence is repeated -- is a long-time economy measure and one much in favor at Paul Terry's cartoon studio. You can have the in-betweeners painstakingly redraw a sequence to give it that sense of reality or you can simply print the sequence twice or more. It's a lot cheaper to do the latter and spend the money, instead, on making the details of the looped sequence richer, with more ants and more elaborate background work.
That's what director Mannie Davis has done with this script about ants. In doing so, he has made the looping its own joke and part of the ants' natures. It's very clever and I might award this a higher score for that -- self-mockery is a worthwhile joke -- except that I've seen too much Terrytoon looping and can't enjoy the joke. So this is an okay cartoon with some nice jokes, but nothing special.
Looping -- that's when an action sequence is repeated -- is a long-time economy measure and one much in favor at Paul Terry's cartoon studio. You can have the in-betweeners painstakingly redraw a sequence to give it that sense of reality or you can simply print the sequence twice or more. It's a lot cheaper to do the latter and spend the money, instead, on making the details of the looped sequence richer, with more ants and more elaborate background work.
That's what director Mannie Davis has done with this script about ants. In doing so, he has made the looping its own joke and part of the ants' natures. It's very clever and I might award this a higher score for that -- self-mockery is a worthwhile joke -- except that I've seen too much Terrytoon looping and can't enjoy the joke. So this is an okay cartoon with some nice jokes, but nothing special.