As the Fly Flies (1944) Poster

User Reviews

Review this title
2 Reviews
Sort by:
Filter by Rating:
1/10
Boring, pointless short that not even a Rube Goldberg can save
llltdesq26 October 2015
Warning: Spoilers
This is a one shot cartoon produced by Columbia. There will be spoilers ahead:

I found this cartoon tedious and meandering, without a point. It's visually nice, but I largely found myself not caring after a while. It even includes a device that's a "Rube Goldberg" (where an overly complex series of actions is strung together as a means of accomplishing a rather basic task) which would typically have saved this one for me, but the last part of the cartoon left me not caring.

The premise is that an interviewer is trying to get an interview with a serious reclusive world famous scientist. More than two minutes at the beginning is spent with the scientist effectively playing hide and seek with the interviewer. The short might have been better if they'd left it at that.

It turns out that this "world famous scientist" is working on a complicated contraption, a huge monstrosity, dedicated to (wait for it) killing house flies. In and of itself, that's not too bad, but the final third of the cartoon is repetitive and stupid. You may like this more than I did, but I was not impressed.

For completists only.
0 out of 0 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink
7/10
Rube Goldberg
boblipton12 February 2014
The plummy-voiced narrator of this late Columbia black and white cartoon interviews Professor Igor Puzzlewitz and quizzes him on his newest Rube-Goldbergesque invention to swat flies. Chaos ensues.

Rube Goldberg was an American engineer, inventor and cartoonist, so beloved that the cartoonists' society named their award after him. He is best remembered for his cartoon inventions which involved ornate and ridiculous series of conveyor belts, heating tubes, alarm clocks, hens in cages and electric doorbells to accomplish simple, everyday tasks. That's what we have here, and full advantage is taken of the black and white illustrations to emphasize the way things move. This was a rough period for Columbia cartoons, but this is one of the better ones from the period.
0 out of 0 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

See also

Awards | FAQ | User Ratings | External Reviews | Metacritic Reviews


Recently Viewed