Old Mother Hubbard

The story is about the dog looking for food after he and Mother Hubbard discover that they have none. The dog meets the king and everyone soon has a grand old time.

When this color cartoon from Ub Iwerks begins, it's pretty dreadful as the characters are doing what they did in many insipid cartoons of the 1930s...sing! Despite this terrible start, however, the film has its merits and it's worth seeing providing you aren't expecting a top quality product.

This cartoon is from a period after Iwerks left Disney. He was responsible for helping create Mickey and much of what made the studio famous but Walt owned everything. So it's not surprising he'd leave to make his own cartoons...though in general you can see why his cartoons were never a match for those of his old company. Too often they have overly cutesy characters and singing...and this one definitely has the singing. Fortunately, it's not as cloying as many of the Iwerks cartoons and the color is amazingly good since the studio was forced to use a two-color process, since at that time Disney owned the exclusive rights to the three-color version of Technicolor...which gives much truer colors and a wider spectrum. You might not suspect this watching "Old Mother Hubbard" since it manages to hide many of the defects of the more primitive system.

By the way, I couldn't score the cartoon any higher because towards the end it has the absolute WORST celebrity impersonation ever. It's supposed to be Maurice Chevalier...though many would have no idea it was supposed to be the French crooner!!