User Reviews

When the story begins, Max Fleischer has a fortune teller reading his cards to tell him his future. Ko-Ko the Clown wants to get into the act...and begs the fortune teller to predict his future as well. In the meantime, Max wants to scare the lady and dresses up like a ghost...and his joke falls flat. Ko-Ko, on the other hand, rigs up a much more interesting and scary ghost. And, as a result, the fortune teller curses Ko-Ko and a bit of stop-motion is used to scare Ko-Ko out of his wits.

So why wasn't I a huge fan of this film? Well, much of it is because there isn't a ton of plot and much of it seems random. I also think the fortune teller gimmick wasn't that interesting and I much prefer the other Ko-Ko films where there's much more interaction between Ko-Ko and Max. Plus, many of the gags seemed to fall a bit flat. Worth seeing...but far from a must-see.

It's the Fleischer brothers doing their Out of the Inkwell with Koko the Clown. Koko finds that a fortune teller has joined the cartoonist. She starts reading him. He is haunted by evil spirits. He escapes into the real world with a storm of cards.

I was expecting an actual battle between Koko and the fortune teller. The end is a bit of a mess. It's a lot of chaos for chaos' sake. She's literally running away from a sock and a tiny cartoon character. It would make sense if she doesn't know that there are self-aware cartoon characters in the world. I like the evil spirit but the rest is a mess.

Max and Koko get mixed up with a live action gypsy fortune teller and then caught up with ghosts and monsters in this, as usual, delightful OUT OF THE INKWELL offering.

Dave Fleischer always packed his cartoons with lots of gags and I think I see a lot of Melies-style gags -- surprising, since Melies hadn't made a movie in more than a decade at this point and his reputation was at low ebb. Nonetheless, Koko does a lot of the same sort of tricks that Melies used to do in his pieces like LES CARTES VIVANTE. This may be due to a 'standard' set of spooky set pieces, or it may be that the Fleischers were fans of Melies. I like to think they were

Dave Fleischer was responsible for many gems. Ones that were amusing and charming, though over-cuteness did come through in some efforts and the stories were always pretty thin, with appealing characters, outstanding music and visuals that were inventive and with innovative animation techniques.

Ko-Ko similarly was an always amiable character to watch and among the better recurring characters in Fleischer's early work. Likewise, his series of Out of the Inkwell cartoons were among the best early efforts of Fleischer and silent cartoons in general. Fleischer may not be at his very finest and 'The Fortune Teller' is not quite one of the best Ko-Ko cartoons. It is high up though and it is very hard to dislike it.

'The Fortune Teller' is slight story wise and occasionally it's on the predictable side, but most of the time one is having too much fun to be caring about that.

The character interplay is truly delightful and the mix of animation and live action and how they blend is seamless.

One expects the animation to be primitive and very low quality, judging by that it's the 20s when animation techniques were not as many, as refined, as ambitious and in their infancy. While Fleischer became more refined and inventive later certainly, the animation is surprisingly good with some nice visual wackiness and wit. The live action also looks good.

It all goes at a bright and breezy pace, while there are a fair share of funny and suitably wild, well-timed and clever moments, also some of the most imaginative and cleverest of the early Ko-Ko cartoons. The atmosphere is similarly suitably spooky. Ko-Ko as ever is very likeable and amusing and Max is terrific fun. The chemistry between the two is one of the cartoon's biggest pleasures.

On the whole, very good. 8/10 Bethany Cox