Let's Watch This: "Maxine's Christmas Carol" (2000)

NOTE: Please do not take any of the little nitpicks in this review (or any of my other reviews, for that matter) seriously. I write these reviews in the hopes of making people laugh. Those nitpicks are really just dumb little observations that I'm attempting to make jokes out of, not complaints that add to whether or not I like something.

NOTE #2: No disrespect is meant towards anyone who worked on the special I am reviewing today. I'm sure they are all very nice and talented people.

NOTE #3: If you like this special, that is great. Go ahead and like it. I'm not judging you.

Hey, everybody, it's the holiday season! And you know what THAT means, don't you? It means it's time for me to start up the Christmas special reviews! Huzzah!

Do you recognize this character?

If you've ever stepped foot in a Hallmark store, there's a very good chance that you do. But do you know this character's name? For the longest time, I didn't either. It wasn't until very recently that I found out her name is Maxine. She was created by Hallmark artist John Wagner - who based the character on his mother, grandmother and aunts - in 1986 for the Shoebox Greetings card line. Since then, this grouchy-looking old lady and her dog, Floyd, have made mucho moolah for Hallmark, with greeting cards, plush toys, ornaments, and even her own Christmas special. That's right, this cantankerous old lady has made the jump into animation.

A very obscure Christmas special is this. It was written by John Wagner and directed by Tim Eldred, who you might know better for his work on Dragon Tales. It was released direct-to-video on September 12th, 2000... a few months before Christmas, but what are you gonna do? I'm not sure if it ever aired on TV, which might be the main reason for its obscurity. As its name suggests, it's a "modernized" (well, not so much "modern" anymore since it's been two decades since the Y2K thing) take on Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, because what other Christmas story could you possibly tell with a cranky old curmudgeon like Maxine?

Fortunately, somebody uploaded the special to YouTube. Is it any good, or should some greeting card characters just stay... well, greeting card characters? Let's find out. For my first Christmas review of the year, we're watching Maxine's Christmas Carol!

Let's Watch This: "Valiant" (2005)

Let's talk a little about Vanguard Animation.

The studio was founded in 2002 by John H. Williams, the producer of Shrek. Since the 2000s, they've been known for releasing some... less than stellar movies. Remember Happily N'Ever After? That was made by them. Space Chimps? Yes, that was them too. TV Tropes claims that the latter film's direct-to-video sequel was such a disaster that it bankrupted Vanguard, but if it did, it clearly didn't keep them down for long - after five years, they released a new film, Get Squirrely, in 2015, followed by a film called Gnome Alone in 2017. Their most recent film was Fearless, released in 2020. But we'll get to those movies another time. Today, we're looking at the very first film that Vanguard Animation ever made: 2005's Valiant.

Directed by Gary Chapman, Valiant was inspired by the hundreds of pigeons who helped soldiers during World War II. It was the second CGI film - after The Magic Roundabout (aka Doogal), which was released the same year - to be made in the United Kingdom. The film received generally negative reviews (it has a 32% "rotten" rating on Rotten Tomatoes) and only made about $61.7 million at the box office... though on a $35 million budget, that's not too bad. Better than Happily N'Ever After, if nothing else.

I remember watching Valiant years ago and finding it pretty good. Is it as good as I remember, or the movie equivalent of a pigeon taking a dump on your car? Let's find out, shall we?

It is May. May 1944. Brave pigeons, one of them voiced by John Cleese, are flying over the English Channel in a thunderstorm, only for falcons to dive in and snatch them up. Did you know that peregrine falcons eat pigeons? If those falcons are peregrine falcons, methinks those poor pigeons are gonna wind up dinner...

Then we cut to another pigeon (Michael Jenn) giving the pigeons' commander, Gutsy (voiced by Hugh Laurie) a message from a seagull - none of the pigeons made it back alive. Gutsy is shocked - those were some of their top flyers. As opposed to his bottom flyers, I guess?

...Please laugh. I'm trying my hardest here.

Since he's voiced by Hugh Laurie, I suppose I should make a Dr. House joke here. But I
haven't actually watched that show, so...

"If we don't find some more birds fast, our goose is going to be cooked," Gutsy declares, giving us what I assume is the first of MANY bird puns that this film is going to send our way.

After that, we are treated to a newsreel about how pigeons are helping out during the war by delivering messages. They are led by the Royal Homing Pigeon Service. Also helping out are doves, who raise seeds for the bird troops or act as nurses for them. This newsreel is being shown in some sort of bird bar that probably has another bird pun for a name (I dunno, maybe "The Bird Feeder" or something?). Pigeons come here to eat, drink, and play pool with snails.

Shouldn't the snails have some say in this?

Among the birds in the bar, there's Valiant, a cheery little pigeon voiced by Ewan McGregor. He tells the bartender, a seagull named Felix (John Hurt), that he could be a member of the Royal Homing Pigeon Service. Felix then goes into a speech about his time in the Aquatic Brigade Gull Division.

Question - how come Felix is the only non-pigeon in the bar? Is it a pigeon-only establishment? Are we going to be dealing with bird racism in this movie?

"Got any dinglehoppers for me, Valiant?"

"You know it's not a bloke's WINGSPAN that counts, it's the size of his spirit!" Felix tells Valiant. Coincidentally, the Royal Homing Pigeon Service is just outside, doing some fancy air tricks. After coming in for a landing, the pigeons, led by Gutsy, head into the bar. Valiant goes gaga over Gutsy and asks how he can sign up, only for the other pigeons in the bar to mock him for his small size. But Gutsy tells Valiant that there's always room in the flock for a more VALIANT birds (I see what he did there) and that sign-ups are tomorrow in London.

Have I ever mentioned that I really like Hugh Laurie? Great actor.

Meanwhile, at Generic Evil Animated Movie Villain Lair...

The two falcons are bringing the John Cleese pigeon, whose name is Mercury, to their boss, the evil Von Talon (Tim Curry). It is here that the falcons establish themselves as your typical animated movie bumbling minion duo (y'know, kind of like Pain and Panic from Hercules). Their names are Cufflingk (Rik Mayall) and Underlingk (Michael Schlingmann).

Also, they have weird accents. Since this film takes place during World War II, and these falcons are the bad guys, I'm guessing they're supposed to be German, but Cufflingk and Underlingk sound British, and Von Talon... I'm not even sure WHAT his accent is. Russian? French?

"Oh, I know I'm not a pretty birdy, but I used to be quite a looker... a STAR..."

After throwing Mercury in a cage, Von Talon demands to know who his "contact in the resistance" is. "This canary will never sing!" Mercury declares. Maybe I should start keeping track of all the bird jokes in this movie...

The next day, Valiant heads off to London to sign up for the Royal Homing Pigeon Service. We get a spit joke (disgusting), and then we cut to a scruffy-looking pigeon named Bugsy (voiced by Ricky Gervais) trying to con some magpies out of their seeds. Fortunately, Valiant falls out of the sky on top of the magpies just as they're about to beat Bugsy up.

Ricky Gervais' being in this is making me think about Muppets Most Wanted. Boy, do I
hate that movie...

After Valiant explains to him what he's doing in London, Bugsy decides to sign up for the Royal Homing Pigeon Service himself to get away from the magpies. Alas, when they arrive at the sign-ups place, the pigeon running it rejects them both - Valiant for being too small and Bugsy for his awful smell. Then Bugsy claims that Valiant is pals with Wing Commander Gutsy, and that Gutsy probably won't be too pleased if they don't let Valiant join.

Off Valiant and a reluctant Bugsy are whisked with three other pigeons to the training grounds. Say hello to Toughwood (Brian Lonsdale) and Tailfeather (Dan Roberts), two dim-witted pigeon brothers who are obsessed with being strong...

So, is Valiant just a runt, or have all the other pigeons just taken pigeon steroids or something?

…and Lofty (Pip Torrens), a prissy intellectual pigeon.

With a monocle, just in case you didn't pick up on the "he's the prissy intellectual one" thing.

And of course, there's also the Sergeant (Jim Broadbent), who's your typical cartoon drill sergeant who shouts a lot. I find it funny how there were TWO animated movies released in 2005 - the other being Robots - that had Ewan McGregor and Jim Broadbent both lending their voices to it.

"When I'm finished with you, you'll have mud in places you didn't know you HAD!"

He also looks down on Valiant for his height, just in case you didn't get by now that this movie is going to have a "size doesn't matter" moral.

Back with the falcons. Von Talon continues to interrogate Mercury, and when he refuses to comply they torture him with... polka music. Uh, okay then...

Well, it could be worse. They could be making him listen to [INSERT SOME MUSICIAN THAT
YOU DISLIKE HERE].

After a hard day of training, Sergeant sends the pigeons to the nurse, Victoria (Olivia Williams). Spoiler alert: she's Valiant's love interest. She doesn't have a whole lot of personality aside from that, she's just there to be his love interest. She also jams a needle up his tailfeathers. Ouch.

Characters getting things shoved into their rears = instant comedy, right?

We get a montage of the pigeons getting a shower, dinner, sleeping arrangements, etc. - and then it's back to the falcons! Mercury still refuses to talk, but the falcons have a syringe full of truth serum. How convenient.

The next morning, the pigeons do some more training... yeah, a good chunk of the movie is like this. Training, training, training, with the occasional scene of Valiant and Victoria flirting.

Also, Stonehenge.

Eventually, Gutsy stops by and says that another squadron has vanished, so that means Valiant and his fellow recruits are needed in battle.

I'm just now noticing that it looks like Toughwood and Tailfeather are wearing tank tops.
It makes Valiant, Bugsy, and Lofty look naked by comparison (well, they ARE naked, but you
know what I mean)...

The message that they will be carrying is of utmost importance. Bugsy, who's a massive coward, wants to continue being alive, so he flies off that night, even after Valiant and the others try to talk him out of it. But the next morning, just as the pigeons are about to fly off to France to meet with the resistance, he comes back. Which is good, seeing as he's the best character in the movie.

After another scene with the falcons, the pigeons parachute out of the plane just as it's being shot down. Problem is, Gutsy's cage gets stuck, so he doesn't get out of the plane. And just when Lofty is trying to convince Valiant that he probably survived, the plane explodes.

Ka-boom.

Then the pigeons run into two mice that are part of the French Resistance. They are Charles De Girl (Sharon Horgan) - clever name - and Rollo (Buckley Collum). Bugsy starts flirting with Charles... yes, a pigeon is flirting with a mouse. This isn't Bee Movie levels of awkward, but it's still pretty awkward.

Too bad they aren't rats. Then I could make a Ratatouille joke.

The pigeons and the mice sneak around, we get a fart joke courtesy of Bugsy (eugh) and eventually Cufflingk and Underlingk spot them and it's chase sequence time. Fortunately, they manage to get to the Resistance headquarters, where another mouse, Jacques (Sean Samuels), gives Bugsy the message. Then Lofty, Toughwood, and Tailfeather lure the falcons away so that Valiant and Bugsy can fly off with the message... alas, Cufflingk catches up with them and manages to get his talons on Bugsy, who he takes to the falcons' EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEVIL lair.

So now the falcons have the message. And Bugsy. This isn't a good thing. Unless you dislike Ricky Gervais.

A bumbling villain's minion actually doing something competent? Huh. Who would've thunk?

Von Talon declares that the "high commander" will be pleased. I don't know who this "high commander" he's referring to is, but since they're German, I think we can assume that it's Hitler. Maybe they didn't think they could actually get away with saying his name in a kids' movie.

Bugsy is thrown into the same cage as Mercury. Meanwhile, Valiant believes himself to be a screw-up because of Bugsy's being in danger... but then Lofty, Tailfeather, and Toughwood show up - as does Gutsy, who's alive. Now they just have to figure out how to get inside the falcon's lair and save Bugsy. Then Valiant remembers that he's pretty small, and could probably fit into the barrel of that gun thing sticking out of the bunker. So he flies over and does just that.

"Alright, here's the plan: we dive-bomb the Nazis and start pecking their eyes out."

Valiant gets his wings on the message and swallows it. He tries to free Bugsy, but Von Talon (who's taking a shower at the moment) has the key to the cage. Bugsy is all "Go on without me, you've gotta complete the mission!" but Valiant is all "No way!" and goes to get the key. Which he does. But in the process, he's spotted by Cufflingk and Underlingk.

Valiant, Bugsy, and Mercury make their escape and rejoin the others. Off they fly to deliver the message. Too bad the falcons are on their tail... or rather, tailFEATHERS. Please laugh.

If it weren't for the fact that there was already a gag involving the song, this would be a great
place to put "Ride of the Valkyries".

While the other pigeons are dealing with Cufflingk and Underlingk, Valiant has to deal with Von Talon.

"Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeere's Johnny!"

Fortunately, a convenient group of warships give Valiant the cover he needs to get away from Von Talon... for a few minutes. Eventually, their chase leads them by Felix's place, and when he sees Valiant being chased by a falcon he sounds the alarm. Blah-blah-blah, more chasing, Von Talon is evil, he pursues Valiant into a mill, where Valiant gets the water flowing. It takes a while, but he eventually manages to take down Von Talon. And even manages to use the waterwheel as a spanking machine!

Oh, the humiliation.

Valiant delivers the message to the Sergeant by channeling Rico from the Madagascar franchise and barfing it up (which means it's now covered in puke. Disgusting). Valiant and his pals are heroes, thousands of lives are saved, and because it's an animated movie from the 2000s we get a dance party ending.

And that's the story of how pigeons stopped Hitler.

What's the Verdict?

Honestly, I was pleasantly surprised to find that Valiant still holds up. Sure, the animation is mediocre, there are some painfully unfunny jokes, and the bumbling minion falcons can get annoying. But the film has heart to it that Happily N'Ever After and Space Chimps lack. It's a great premise for an animated film, too - a war movie told from the perspective of the messenger pigeons? I'm surprised it took until 2005 for us to get one of those. The majority of the characters are likeable (if one-dimensional), most of the jokes work, and, c'mon, how can you go wrong with a film that has Jim Broadbent, John Cleese, and Hugh Laurie lending their voices to it? So, all in all, while I would hardly call Valiant PIXAR-quality, I'd say it's worth watching at least once.

And hey, you've gotta give the filmmakers some credit - it's a movie about pigeons and yet I don't think there's a single "pigeons pooping on things" joke. They could've easily had one of the pigeons crap on a Nazi's head or something, but they didn't. That shows major restraint.

Let's Watch This: "Mr. Bug Goes to Town" (1941)

NOTE: Please do not take any of the little nitpicks in this review (or any of my other reviews, for that matter) seriously. I write these reviews in the hopes of making people laugh. Those nitpicks are really just dumb little observations that I'm attempting to make jokes out of, not complaints that add to whether or not I like something.

Let's talk about Fleischer Studios. Founded in the 1920s by brothers Max and Dave Fleischer, this studio was responsible for cartoons starring characters like Betty Boop, Popeye, and Koko the Clown. They were one of Walt Disney Productions' biggest competitors... when it came to cartoon shorts, that is. There was one category where Disney had them beat - animated MOVIES.

But that's not to say Fleischer Studios didn't try. After Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was a hit, Paramount had Fleischer Studios whip up an adaptation of Gulliver's Travels so they could cash in on its success. The film was released in 1939, and despite its obscurity nowadays was actually a box office success. This led to Fleischer Studios making another film, the film that we'll be looking at today - 1941's Mr. Bug Goes to Town... or, as it was called in the United Kingdom, Hoppity Goes to Town.

This film, unlike Gulliver's Travels, was a box office bomb. Part of this is because Paramount did a lousy job of promoting it. The other part was that it came out just two days before Pearl Harbor. And its bombing resulted in Paramount foreclosing Fleischer Studios, kicking out Max Fleischer and renaming it Famous Studios. And apparently this, combined with the box office failures of Pinocchio and Fantasia, resulted in Walter Lanz, Paul Terry, and Leon Schlesinger scrapping any ideas THEY had for animated feature films.

But Mr. Bug does have its fans, among them animation legend Hayao Miyazaki, so there's a pretty good chance it could be an underrated classic that just had the misfortune of being a box office bomb. I mean, if being a lousy movie was all it took for a movie to bomb, that 2011 Smurfs movie wouldn't have been such a hit. So today, we'll be watching Mr. Bug Goes to Town to see if it deserved better or if more people should take a flyswatter to it.

So the movie begins with the camera panning around New York City (or at least what I assume is New York City) as the opening credits roll. Eventually, we pan down to a small house, and then to a garden in front of that small house, which unbeknownst to the city's human residents is home to a teeny, tiny city with buildings constructed out of trash. The city's population? Bugs.

So, is THAT Mr. Bug? If so, he's not so much "going to town" as he is
"already IN town"...

We go inside some sort of bakery/ice cream shop where kindly Mr. Bumble (voiced by Jack "Popeye" Mercer) and his daughter Honey (Pauline Loth) reside. They are bees, but they really don't look much like bees. Mr. Bumble at least looks like SOME kind of cartoony bug, Honey just looks like a girl with wings and antennae. Though, to be fair, it's not like Jiminy Cricket looks all that much like a cricket. I guess this is just how animators drew bugs back in the 1940s.

What do you call the insect equivalent of a furry? Whatever it is, this character
is to them what Lola Bunny is to furries.

Mr. Bumble and a ladybug (Margie Hines) start talking about how them "human ones" are such a nuisance, tramplin' through the bug city and causing property damage with their giant feet. Hopefully none of the residents of the bug city got STEPPED ON BY THEM.

Then a little kid bug dressed as a boy scout named Buzz (Mae Questel) bursts in to tell the ladybug that her house is on fire (I hope her children aren't home) - the result of a cigar being thrown at it by one of them HUMANS. A crotchety snail who reminds me of Grumpy from Snow White (he's even voiced by Pinto Colvig, the voice of Grumpy!) insists that they're all doomed.

Why does the snail have arms and legs?

"It's that FENCE!" he claims. From my understanding, originally the big fence kept human beings from stomping all over the garden, but now the fence is worn-down and humans can get through no problem. Mr. Bumble hates the idea of anything happening to his bakery.

But not everybody is troubled by this - a fly and a mosquito are spying on the other bugs, and upon hearing about their troubles the fly says that they've gotta tell "da boss" about it. These two are the villain's minions, and their names are Swat (also Jack Mercer) and Smack (Carl Meyer) respectively. Those are clever names for a fly and a mosquito. And just in case you didn't get that they were bad guys, they have Brooklyn accents.

Smack looks an awfully lot like Pinocchio, doesn't he?

So they go to see their boss, the villainous Mr. C. Bagley Beetle (Ted Pierce), and fill him in as to what's going on. Then Smack gives some exposition as to how Mr. Beetle bought up all this property high up in a part of the garden that them pesky humans never come through.

Yes, that's supposed to be a beetle.

It turns out Mr. Beetle is one of those bad guys that acts all nice and kindhearted-like when he's around the good guys so no one will suspect he's up to no good. He reminds Mr. Bumble that this sort of thing never happens up where HE lives, so if Mr. Bumble were to let him marry his daughter the three of them could live up there safe and sound, hintidy-hint-hint-hint. Yes, Mr. Beetle is also one of those "has the hots for the main female character of the movie" sort of bad guys. Honey should join Elisa, Belle, and Esmerelda's support group.

You'd never be able to show a character smoking in an animated movie nowadays.

Mr. Bumble is all "Sorry, but Honey doesn't have the hots for you" before mentioning that Honey's sweetheart, Hoppity, is coming back. This makes Mr. Beetle MAD!

So, ten minutes in we finally get to see our main character, Hoppity the grasshopper (Stan Freed). He rides into town on a lantern hanging from a wagon, then maneuvers his way around the feet of gigantic human beings... and one Scottish Terrier.

Everyone knows that grasshoppers are a Scottish Terrier's natural prey.

Upon entering the garden, Hoppity is shocked to see human footprints and the smoking remains of cigar-lit buildings. He receives a warm welcome from all of his fellow bugs. Especially Honey, who as we've established is the Olive Oyl to his Popeye.

Did you know that grasshoppers have their ears on their bellies? No, really.
Look it up.

Meanwhile, Mr. Beetle and his two stooges run afoul of another smoking cigar. After it nearly rolls right towards Mr. Bumble's place, Mr. Beetle gets a nasty, awful idea. He pushes the cigar right towards the bakery/ice cream shop/bar/whatever it is. And... it actually doesn't set it aflame or even cause much damage.

Fortunately, Hoppity spots a fire hydrant across the street. But in order to get to it so he can get some water, he has to cross the street, and apparently it's rush hour and the movie goes all Frogger on us. Buzz helps by stinging a traffic cop, resulting in him blowing his whistle and all the cars screeching to a halt. One car starts spewing out gasoline. Which Hoppity mistakes for water. Uh oh...

You had ONE JOB, Hoppity.

Upon being doused with gasoline, the cigar explodes. We get... believe it or not... a blackface joke. A BLACKFACE JOKE. I know this was the 1940s, but still...

Well, anyhow, it seems that Mr. Beetle's plan is foiled... though it honestly would've been foiled even without Hoppity seeing as how the cigar didn't do any damage to Mr. Bumble's place. He has Honest John and Gideon... I mean, Smack and Swat stalk Hoppity and Honey as they go for a moonlit walk to some sort of bug nightclub in the sewers. We even get a musical number once they arrive!

Y'know, say what you will about the character designs in A Bug's Life and how
they're not very realistic, but at least PIXAR didn't just put wings and a pair of
antennae on a human girl for all the female bugs in THEIR movie.

While Honey and Hoppity are dancing, Smack tries to whack Hoppity on the head with a nail, but winds up getting it tangled in some electrical wires and he gets electrocuted. Hoppity tries to help him, but gets electrocuted as well. And then, um, this happens...

After whatever that was, Hoppity and Honey leave the club singing another song. Swat and Smack head back to Mr. Beetle's place to recap the previous scene for him.

"Magic mirror on the wall, who's the most boring animated movie villain of all?"

The next day, the bug city comes under the attack of a bunch of hockey-playing kids. Fortunately, no one is harmed, but Hoppity insists that if they can't stop the humans from barging in on them, they should just move. But where to? "There isn't anywhere," Mr. Bumble laments, except that garden up next to that big place where the human ones live. Hoppity says that he's gonna go over to that garden and look it over. But, oh no! Mr. Beetle, Smack and Swat are listening in on them. Dun-dun-duuuuuuuuuun...

Hoppity and Mr. Bumble check out the garden, which is absolutely stunning. Hoppity claims that they probably don't have to worry about the "human ones" that live nearby - "Anybody who'd keep a garden lookin' like this couldn't be so bad!" he insists. "At least I don't think so." They even climb inside a watering can... which the garden's owner promptly brings inside to fill up. But Mr. Bumble is saved from drowning by the humans, Dick and Mary Dickens (voiced by Kenny Gardner and Gwen Williams respectively).

And they just leave Hoppity in there? What the heck?

The Dickenses place Mr. Bumble back outside in the garden, so now he and Hoppity know for SURE that this would be a swell place to live.

Oh, and by the way, Mr. Beetle sent Swat and Smack after Hoppity and Mr. Bumble to... I guess murder Hoppity, but when they saw Hoppity and Mr. Bumble get brought into the house, they assume they're both goners and lie to Mr. Beetle about how they killed them both. Upon discovering that they're still alive, he's none too pleased.

So the bugs all pack up their things and move to the garden, singing another song... well, except for Grumpy Snail. So, is that it? Is the movie over? Well, no. There's one thing the bugs didn't count on - THE SPRINKLER SYSTEM.

"The conflict has been resolved, but it's only the second act. I'd better start
spraying water everywhere to make the bugs all go back to their old city and keep
the plot going!"

All the bugs freak out... because apparently it never rains in New York City so the bugs never had water falling from the sky onto them before? And then the HOSE comes loose from the sprinkler system and starts flooding the garden.

"CURSE YOU, J. LESSLER! WHO, FOR THOSE UNAWARE, WAS THE GUY
RESPONSIBLE FOR THE FIRST SPRINKLER PATENT!"

The water carries the bugs all back to their little city, and now nearly everyone is mad at Hoppity even though he had no way of knowing that the humans who own the garden were going to turn on a giant sprinkler and wash them out.

Well, I did say NEARLY everyone...

Hoppity and Honey overhear the Dickenses who own the garden talking about how Dick is a songwriter and that they're waiting for a check from a publishing company he sold one of his songs to so that they can use the money to fix up the garden and fence where the bugs are living. So, problem solved, right? Well, no. Mr. Beetle was in the middle of trying to talk Mr. Bumble into letting him marry Honey when they came in to tell them the good news, so Mr. Beetle makes it his new goal to make sure the Dickenses never get that check, bwah-ha-ha...

So he has Swat and Smack steal the check once it arrives so that the Dickenses can't find it. The result: the fence not getting fixed, more humans barging in and causing property damage for the bugs, everyone giving Hoppity a hard time, and characters speaking in rhyme for whatever reason. And all because a beetle really, really wants to get it on with a bee.

"Craaaaaaaaaaawling in my exoskeletoooooooooooooooon..."

And just to add insult to injury, then Hoppity overhears the Dickenses talking about how they got a foreclosure notice. And if they leave the house, the city's gonna demolish it and put up another skyscraper. Here's a question - why doesn't Dick just write another song and get the publishing company to buy it so they'll get ANOTHER check?

And not just any skyscraper, mind you - a MODERN skyscraper.

Mr. Beetle is initially all cheery about this until he realizes that the skyscraper will also cover HIS property. It'll be worthless! So he decides to give all of his property to the other bugs in the city. On one condition, of course - if Honey marries him. But what's this? Hoppity heard all of that!

"Uh... April Fool's?"

Hoppity declares that he's going to go tell the other bugs just what kind of insect Mr. Beetle is. Alas, Swat and Smack manage to stop him by TYING HIS ARMS AND LEGS INTO A KNOT. Ouch!

And then they reveal to Hoppity that they stole the check, then proceed to open up the envelope and shove him inside. I guess they're hoping that he'll suffocate in there.

Where's a can of Raid when you need one?

So now Honey is stuck having to marry Mr. Beetle, but at least the bugs all have a place to live. We get another song and Swat offends the entire continent of Asia.

The blackface gag was bad enough.

Little does Mr. Beetle know that the construction crew has already arrived to start building that skyscraper. Question, what was Mr. Beetle's plan after giving his property, which in addition to being worthless would've been destroyed when they started to build the skyscraper, to the other bugs? Where was HE going to live?

Also, what is that black pointy thing supposed to be?

The bugs all flee back to the city, only for construction to start up THERE too once they arrive. On the bright side, Hoppity manages to get free from the cinder block the bad guys stuck the envelope he was in under. However, Mr. Beetle and his goons have decided to kidnap Honey because... I don't know what his plan is now. Fortunately, Hoppity shows up and, despite still being stuck inside an envelope, kicks the baddies' butts. Or rather, ambdomins, since they're bugs and all.

After being freed, Hoppity tells the other bugs about Mr. Beetle's scheme. Then he overhears the Dickenses talking about how, if they had that check, they could live on the roof of the skyscraper and have a nice garden. He goes to get the check, but by the time he comes back with it, the Dickenses have left. He can't find them, but he DOES find the mail carrier. So there's THAT, at least.

Hoppity tells the other bugs that they have to go up to the top of the skyscraper. "If we stick together, why, everything's gonna be all right!" he exclaims. We get a montage of the bugs climbing the skyscraper's infrastructure and the mail carrier trying to find the Dickenses. As for Mr. Beetle, Swat, and Smack, they run afoul of Mr. Cement Mixer.

Okay, how the heck did that teeny tiny beetle survive a BRICK being placed
on top of him?

Swat and Smack manage to free Mr. Beetle, the bugs keep climbing, the mail carrier finds the Dickenses, the Dickenses gets the check, the song becomes a hit, the skyscraper is built, blah blah blah…

And not a sprinkler in sight.

Everybody's happy... except for Mr. Beetle, who's apparently in jail. The end.

What's the Verdict?

Mr. Bug Goes to Town is... okay. Not good, not bad, just okay. The animation's nice, there are a few good gags, the voice actors all do a fine job. But the film has a lot of problems. For one thing, it's needlessly long. There's a LOT of padding that could've easily been cut. The characters are really uninteresting. I'm not a huge fan of most of the character designs, either... slapping wings and antennae on a human being doesn't automatically make it look like an insect. I'm not saying I want photo-realistic bugs, just something at least slightly more bug-like.

Regardless, the film is a nice little piece of animation history, and worth watching if you're a fan of Fleischer Studios and their output. If you'd like to watch Mr. Bug Goes to Town for yourself, you can find it on YouTube. Just don't expect Snow White levels of quality.

Maybe Fleischer Studios would have gotten better at making full-length movies had this one not flopped and they would've made more. I guess we'll never know. Ah well...