The Dish Ran Away with the Spoon (1933) Poster

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7/10
Singing and dancing with the dishes
TheLittleSongbird7 August 2018
Love animation, it was a big part of my life as a child, particularly Disney, Looney Tunes, Hanna Barbera, Studio Ghibli and Tom and Jerry, and still love it whether it's film, television or cartoons. With significantly broader knowledge of different directors, animation styles and studios, actually appreciate and love it even more now.

As has been said a few times already, 'The Dish Ran Away with the Spoon' is fairly typical of Harmon-Ising (not enormous favourites of mine but understand their importance in animation history), leaning towards the cute kind of cartoon with a lot of sentiment in alternative to the laugh a minute and hilarious kind, the latter being the one that a lot seem to prefer (understandably, though am hardly biased against the former). This approach has varied with Ising. In some instances it has been very sweet and charming, in others it can be cloying and too cutesy. Generally 'The Dish Ran Away with the Spoon' belongs in the former category, despite the danger of falling into the latter with the premise.

'The Dish Ran Away with the Spoon' has a lot to like although not a great cartoon, not one to completely overlook if not a cartoon to watch repeatedly.

Yes it gets a bit too saccharine in places and it is best perhaps to not talk about the story because there really isn't much of one.

What 'The Dish Ran Away with the Spoon' does so well however eclipses these problems. The animation is rich in detail for design and backgrounds, vibrant and crisp. The composer for the prime-era 'Tom and Jerry' cartoons and regular Tex Avery composer Scott Bradley provides a lush and atmospheric music score. The voice acting is also on point.

It is hard not to fall in love with the characters, even if they are not especially distinctive, and it has enough likeability and personality to not be dull. 'The Dish Ran Away with the Spoon' is rich in natural sweet charm and some very imaginative ideas and visuals in its recreation of the authentic setting. There is nothing hilarious and the cartoon's hardly laugh a minute, but a good deal of it does charm and touch. There are many fun moments and some inventive ones too, enjoyed the impersonations though familiarity is in order. The pace avoids being too draggy, with it being full of energy throughout when things got going.

Summarising, nice and pleasant to watch if not a must watch. 7/10 Bethany Cox
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6/10
Most likely the source material for THE INCREDIBLE HULK . . .
oscaralbert7 March 2015
Warning: Spoilers
. . . this suggestive black-and-white animated short film from 1933 features a chorus line of totally nude tea cups. There's also a naked fork crudely drying himself off between his tines, as well as the aforementioned morphing pie crust monster who goes into some sort of 'Roid Rage when he inexplicably drinks a glass of antacid. From its opening showgirl chorus of "Nobody knew what love could do till the dish ran away with the spoon," to the tragic dismemberment and frying alive of Mr. Crust, THE DISH RAN AWAY WITH THE SPOON presents a stew of genres from musical and romantic drama to a Busby Berkeley-like exercise in precision choreography, continuing on through screwball comedy, Femme Fatale film noir to ultimate horror and gangster mayhem. It's not often that a "creature feature" lasting less than eight minutes can find time to cram in five songs. Did Walt Disney ever imagine dishes rinsing themselves with a meat grinder, then drying off in toasters? It's pretty clear that Disney's secondary characters in its BEAUTY AND THE BEAST animated feature were plagiarized directly from this 1933 Warner Bros. offering, but Walt's Hench-Descendants have rigged the U.S. copyright system to stifle, stymie, squelch, and squash anybody else's efforts to pay it forward well past the life of our Sun.
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Mesmerizing!
Mary-1820 February 2003
Dishes and foodstuffs sing, dance, impersonate celebrities, and finally join together to battle a monster made of dough! Do the utensils ultimately win the war? I'm not telling, but the results look deee-licious!

Pointless, but incredibly entertaining.
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10/10
Wonderful! Look at the daily life of long ago!
Dagurasu11 March 2010
Warning: Spoilers
I love these old everyday location cartoons. For one thing they show common utensils and appliances of daily life for their time. Look at the old cast iron kitchen stove-just like my grandma used. I remember seeing one in storage when I was a child. It was about as heavy as you can imagine. I would guess that it probably weighed close to half a ton. Once it was hot it probably took a long time to cool off. Can you imagine cooking on it on a hot humid summer day? How about that waffle iron? I can remember seeing one of those too. How about the water pump for the kitchen sink? No sign of a faucet in those days. You can imagine how hard the housewife of 70 years ago had to work. I get a real kick out of these old cartoons. The old fashioned music is just another point of interest. The 1930's was the time of the Great Depression. So it is black and white! Who cares?
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