This is a short in the Screen Song series which features a cameo by Betty Boop. There will be spoilers ahead:
Unlike most of the other Screen Songs, this one has the live action musical performers (The Wandering Minstrels) opening up the short with the title song. The duo are actually fairly good singers and blend well together, but this opening bit is seriously dated and features the two singing part of the verse in dialects. It's less than impressive.
The animation opens on an army camp and starts with the sun blowing a wake up call on a bugle. We see a tree and a cannon waking up and then we see the soldiers and various items waking up, talking and complaining about it being early and cold and so on. There's a really good section where the troops move to the formation in their cots and answer roll call from a prone position. The sergeant is calling roll in between snoozes! The best action sequence shows the troops moving rapidly en masse to the mess, with some good sight gags involving trees and a pair of cliffs. They pour into the mess shack and you see a cook moving down a row with a coffee pot, pouring out coffee into cups regardless of what a soldier asks for and dropping in a sugar cube. The payoff to the gag is predictable but funny.
Then Betty Boop comes out and starts the audience singalong, with the "bouncing ball" cuing the lyrics for the audience. The words are framed by a mix of animation and live action and the short finishes off with an animated segment which includes a hike.
This short is available here and there and is worth watching once.
Unlike most of the other Screen Songs, this one has the live action musical performers (The Wandering Minstrels) opening up the short with the title song. The duo are actually fairly good singers and blend well together, but this opening bit is seriously dated and features the two singing part of the verse in dialects. It's less than impressive.
The animation opens on an army camp and starts with the sun blowing a wake up call on a bugle. We see a tree and a cannon waking up and then we see the soldiers and various items waking up, talking and complaining about it being early and cold and so on. There's a really good section where the troops move to the formation in their cots and answer roll call from a prone position. The sergeant is calling roll in between snoozes! The best action sequence shows the troops moving rapidly en masse to the mess, with some good sight gags involving trees and a pair of cliffs. They pour into the mess shack and you see a cook moving down a row with a coffee pot, pouring out coffee into cups regardless of what a soldier asks for and dropping in a sugar cube. The payoff to the gag is predictable but funny.
Then Betty Boop comes out and starts the audience singalong, with the "bouncing ball" cuing the lyrics for the audience. The words are framed by a mix of animation and live action and the short finishes off with an animated segment which includes a hike.
This short is available here and there and is worth watching once.