User Reviews

Despite Oswald the Lucky Rabbit and his cartoons being popular and well received at the time, they have been vastly overshadowed over time by succeeding animation characters. It is a shame as, while not cartoon masterpieces, they are fascinating for anybody wanting to see what very old animation looked like.

After a mostly disappointing standard of the 1931 Oswald cartoons, apart from about seven or eight, judging from 'Grandma's Pet' (Oswald's take on 'Little Red Riding Hood') and this cartoon 'Mechanical Man' the 1932 batch of cartoons is set to have potential of being higher and more consistent in quality.

'Mechanical Man' may not be one of the best Oswald cartoons, the story is thin and does veer on the confused and overly oddball at times, there are a couple of bizarre and lacking in sharpness gags and for a titular character the robot could have had a little more to do.

However, the animation is good and has some imaginative moments. It is smooth and detailed with Oswald's movements, gestures and expressions still very much natural. Drawings are fine and there is little if any choppiness or incompleteness.

Even better is the music, so catchy and has such an infectious energy. Most of the gags are very amusing and a few even more so than that.

Oswald is very endearing, as is his girlfriend, and the villain is a suitably dastardly nemesis if a little archetypal.

All in all, quite good fun and almost as good as the previous cartoon 'Grandma's Pet'. 7/10 Bethany Cox

Back in the 1920s, Walt Disney came up with the Oswald character and the cartoons were very successful...mostly because Oswald was a lovable jerk! However, Universal Studios did Walt wrong and soon took the films away from him--keeping most of his employees in the process. As a result, Walt and a few colleagues had to start over....and, it turned out to be fortunate, as his next creation, owned entirely by him, was Mickey Mouse.

In the meantime, Universal managed to take a very popular character and completely ruin him. Over time, the artwork improved....but the character became cutesy and incredibly bland. In "The Mechanical Man", the studio managed to take a neat story idea and make it so, so dull!

In 'The Mechanical Man", a mad scientist needs a heart for his robot. Naturally, he tries to get Oswald's. So, with a wacky secret lair and minions, how, oh how did this all manage to be so dull???!!!

The bottom line is that the art was decent...the writing practically non-existent. Dull, dull and, well, dull.

Just watched this Walter Lantz-Bill Nolan Oswald the Rabbit cartoon on YouTube. In this one, Oswald and his girlfriend are playing the piano with an animated light bulb and an accordion dancing along. A peg leg villain makes a robot that needs a human heart. As Oswald and his girlfriend do magic tricks on each other, the villain comes along and trades his bag for the one Oswald's girlfriend is in. From there, Oswald follows the villain and his girlfriend to the villain's house...There's quite a few bizarre gags abounding in the rest of the animated short though they're more interesting to look at than laugh at. Cartainly despite my synopsis, nothing really makes sense here though you might not care because of the clever movements that occur most of the time. So on that note, Mechanical Man is worth a look.