The Soup Song (1931) Online

The title refers to something that happens in the last minute of this cartoon, in Flip's Cafe. A customer is making noise slurping his soup so Flip puts music to his slurping. It's not well-received as the rest of the customers throw food at them!

This early animated effort gets off to a rousing start with some foot-tapping swing-type music in which we see the chimney of the building swaying to the music and fireflies acting as a neon sign, advertising "CAFE." That was pretty clever.

Inside, we get a some sight gags of how Flip runs the restaurant, some of the entertainment at the café - a hot female cat who flirts with Flip - and a whole bunch of music. There is no dialog. Overall, it's very dated but decent entertainment. The first segment of this cartoon was the best.

This was the second cartoon in a series of fourteen old ones on a DVD called "Cartoons That Time Forget: The UB Iwerks Collection Vol. 1."

This is essentially a plotless cartoon. The "plot" can be summed up in three words: Flip makes soup. Since stopping here would make for drab commentary, I'll continue. It's a moderately entertaining short, if the parts are much greater than a very fragmented whole. Music and sight gags are all this short has. The music is good and the sight gags are generally funny. I wouldn't venture out of my way to see this one alone, but the DVD it's on is worth owning and it is a decent, if not memorable, cartoon. Worth watching.

Ub Iwerks's Flip the Frog series of cartoons was short-lived, only lasting from 1930 to 1933. On the most part the Flip the Frog cartoons are not great or cartoon/animated masterpieces and it is sort of understandable as to why Flip didn't make it bigger. However they are far from terrible ones either and do hold some interest.

The series started off with three watchable but average cartoons in a row with the historically significant 'Fiddlesticks', 'Little Orphan Willie' and 'Flying Fists', before getting stronger with 'The Village Barber' and particularly 'Cuckoo Murder Case', both among the stronger Flip the Frog cartoons. 'The Soup Song' once again, along with 'Puddle Pranks' and 'The Village Smithy', sees the series go backwards and back to the not bad but nothing special standard of the first three Flip the Frog cartoons.

Not bad at all by all means. The animation is good enough with beautifully detailed backgrounds, nice shading and characters that aren't drawn too crudely. The music makes even more of an impact, it is lushly and cleverly orchestrated, full of lively energy and not only adds brilliantly to the action it enhances it.

'The Soup Song' does mildly amuse and charm in places, with some nicely engineered and amusing gags. Not a dull or completely humourless cartoon. The supporting characters are nice enough The chemistry between the characters does have a little charm and tension.

However, Flip doesn't really have a very interesting or compelling personality which is a very big problem in general in the series. Willie Whopper who came later was an even more short-lived character and to me while also limited he was a much better character. There are actually more gags than usual, and while there are amusing parts others veer on the childish. With Iwerks, there was the danger of having too much sentiment and, while other Flip the Frog fare worse in this regard, 'The Soup Song' is at times too cutesy, which makes things feel a bit bland and forgettable.

Also problematic is the very thinly plotted story, which actually is not much of one at all and is very predictable, taking a fairly familiar premise and doing very little if anything new with it. Structurally, it also feels very cobbled together, like an episodic series of events that's not always cohesive and occasionally it's on the dull side with some draggy pacing.

Overall, average but not a bad cartoon. 5/10 Bethany Cox

Through much of the 1920s, Ub Iwerks and Walt Disney worked together and they even worked on creating the first Mickey Mouse cartoons. So obviously old Ub was a talented guy. However, he tired of working under Walt's shadow and started up his own cartoon company which lasted only a few years. And, judging by "The Soup Song" I can see exactly why his cartoons bombed.

This cartoon stars one of the most unappealing and bland cartoon stars of all time, Flip the Frog. He didn't look nor act like a frog and his cartoons were among Iwerks' worst. Here he runs a restaurant where there are lots of animals that sing (in animal voices) and dance...and not much else. It's the epitome of cutesy nonsense and none of it is very funny. The artwork is average for the day and I can't see how Disney or the Fleischers would have taken Iwerks' films as serious competition. Pretty much a dull and insipid cartoon from start to finish.

By the way, if you care, when Flip changes his face at the beginning, he's supposed to be imitating Paul Whiteman, one of the biggest big band leaders of the era. Whiteman was the guy who gave Bing Crosby his break.