Northwoods (1931) Online

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 the very good 'The Bandmaster', of the 1931 batch of Walter Lantz Oswald cartoons between 'China' and this cartoon 'Northwoods' that was the best by quite some way, 'Northwoods' is a big step backwards and back to the mediocre at best and forgettable standard of most of the cartoons during that window. Not an awful cartoon, but one of the weaker Oswald cartoons in general and one of the weakest Lantz Oswald cartoons as well.

What saves 'Northwoods' from being worse is the animation, occasionally lacking refinement but most of it is smooth and detailed with Oswald's movements, gestures and expressions still very much natural. Drawing has occasional crudeness but is mostly fine and transitions don't feel as choppy and incomplete as some of the worst Oswald cartoons.

Oswald is endearing enough, though deserving of better material, and Pete is a worthy foil as ever. Synchronisation is good.

However, 'Northwoods' is one of the very rare times where the music doesn't work. It sounds often that it was made for a different cartoon put together and sometimes it is used irritatingly and repetitively, other Oswald cartoons also do a much better job having music that synchronises with the action.

It may be possible to forgive the non-existent story if the pacing was good and the gags were funny. Neither are the case in 'Northwoods'. Pacing is sluggish with too much being drawn out, and none of the gags are amusing let alone funny, they don't even reach the "cute" factor. The sound is muffled sounding a lot of the time.

All in all, pretty poor, not a good representation of Oswald or Lantz. 3/10 Bethany Cox

It's off to the now-obscure genre of Mountie movies as Oswald tries to arrest Pete in this occasionally annoying Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoon directed by Walter Lantz and William Nolan.

The part I find annoying is its obvious attempt to burlesque cheap stage melodrama in the synchronized score. It does this mostly by musical director James Dietrich offering a score that is mostly tinkly piano versions of well known music. The movies were not that far out of the silent era and the effort seems more ill-natured than funny. During a period when most cartoon studios were straining to move from synchronization -- in which the score took the place of the house orchestra -- to full sound cartoons -- in which characters talked and the world on screen offered interesting sound effect -- this one seems ill-considered at best and stupid at worst.