Buddy's Show Boat (1933) Poster

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4/10
Buddy's Show Boat is another Looney Tunes-time filler pre-Porky
tavm26 May 2008
This is another Leon Schlesinger-Looney Tune-Buddy cartoon I recently discovered on YouTube. With the leading character being such a bland creation, the animators must have simply thought of weird material to keep themselves awake while making these boring time fillers. Buddy's Show Boat is so obviously pre-Code when the bells on the telephone look like a lady's breasts and we see the villain looking at Buddy's girlfriend Cookie in a lecherous manner with us also enjoying the view (for those who like looking at such things)! For anyone interested in seeing these vintage cartoons and how different they are to today's, this is certainly worth a look. Otherwise, the easily bored should probably avoid. By the way, the YouTube version is not the best print.
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4/10
Not much interesting on show here
TheLittleSongbird1 September 2017
Now a fairly obscure character, Buddy was the second Warner Brothers Looney Tunes character, after Bosko and followed by Beans the Cat. Buddy didn't last long, being retired in 1935 after 23 cartoons starting in 1933.

The previous two cartoons 'Buddy's Day Out' and 'Buddy's Beer Garden' were not great cartoons and did show why Buddy as a character didn't last long, but they had their moments that made them average fare than bad. 'Buddy's Show Boat' has a few good things but really doesn't have that much to it. It is interesting to see very early cartoon characters like Buddy before Warner Brothers Looney Tunes went on to much better things with far better and deservedly longer preserved characters. It was interesting to see a cartoon where the Code had not yet been enforced and cartoons were able to get away with much more.

'Buddy's Show Boat' is really pretty much for those interest points and not much else. Part of the trouble is the character of Buddy himself, one can see why he didn't last long. Not annoying as such and less of a stereotype than Bosko, but he isn't the most interesting or compelling of characters. Pretty bland to me actually and rarely funny.

Like the previous two cartoons, 'Buddy's Show Boat' is pretty dull and is not very funny. The previous two cartoons however had a few good moments, especially 'Buddy's Beer Garden', whereas here the laughs and creativity are lacking severely. Even the weirder, more daring elements don't amuse and don't feel right within the cartoon.

It's far too cutesy too and the dialogue is nothing to write home about at all. The story is non-existent and the pacing is never lively and often dull.

However, there are good elements. The animation is nicely drawn and detailed. Music played a big part in the Buddy cartoons and it was essential for it to work. Luckily it has the liveliness and energy, as well as the lush and vibrant orchestration, that was lacking elsewhere.

Cookie is charming and the voice actors do their best with little to do.

So summing up, worth a look as a one-time watch for interest, but re-watch value is zero. 4/10 Bethany Cox
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6/10
Warner Bros. decides to put a more realistically human couple . . .
oscaralbert25 January 2017
Warning: Spoilers
. . . out as the faces of the Looney Tunes with the advent of Buddy and his gal Cookie, since America was beset with so many REAL problems in the 1930s. Then, as today, Racism Ran Rampant, with the "Strange Fruit" of routine Lynchings hanging from every other tree. You can hear the poignant resignation to this Major Problem in the voices of the Blacks-in-Blackface quartet as they sing and shovel coal in the bowels of BUDDY'S SHOWBOAT. Sexual Perversion was the other main problem facing SHOWBOAT's contemporary audience, as it is Today. From the stripped-down-to-her-panties Sexy Saxophonist dominating the show parade Drum Major Buddy leads down Main Street to the seven Black Bikini-clad back-up dancers on exhibition behind Buddy and Cookie as they perform, Sex is Everywhere. It's small wonder that Cookie is soon grabbed by a misshapen scruffy dude, who'll immediately put Today's viewers in mind of self-confessed serial finger rapist and court-documented marital sexual assaulter, White House Resident Rump. Too bad William Howard Taft's pet walrus is not around to bail out the Girl Scouts visiting the Oval Office, like the walrus saving Cookie in this cartoon.
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