Small Fry

This odd cartoon from 1939 is really a cult film. The bizarre story makes it enjoyable. It has a great score by Hoagy Carmichael.

A pretty simple story with some nice animation. A little fish leaves his family to show them that he is a "big fry." But, of course, he doesn't realize that the guys he is gravitated toward are thugs. Of course, it was 1939 and the outcome is pretty predictable.

I still want to be a big fry and go to the big fry club, playing pool, getting into fights like Russell Crowe, and smoke with the big fry! Don't you want to be a big fry?

This Fleischer cartoon is infamous for it's unusual fish freak out scene. A small fry fish, still in 'school', wants to smoke and be one of the big boys. He sneaks away after Momma catfish puts him in his room to study and winds up at the 'pool' hall, where all sorts of different kinds of larger fish smoke and shoot pool. They decide to induct him into the fish union and slip him a mickey before pushing him into a dark cave where he hallucinates as he bumps into all sorts of fish eating images. He runs home to momma and is happy at school thereafter. A simple enough storyline but the animation is cherce. A+++ M:

When a film is 7 minutes long, it really doesn't have much time to pull you in to the story. A few minutes of background info takes up half the film. Because of this limitation, many early cartoons have either very simple or very non-sensical plots, while others have no plot at all. But Small Fry is that rare gem that is able to pull you in to the story with only the smallest amount of background. A teacher's pet is sent to the Catfish house with a note asking why Junior Catfish wasn't in school. It reads, "Did he play hookey or did he get hooked?" Suddenly you actually do care about the whereabouts of this fictional fish you've never met or heard of before. Throughout the rest of the short, Small Fry just hits all the right notes--the music, animation, and story line are all top notch.