Boy Meets Dog (1938) Online

This disorderly late-30s singsong cartoon dares to examine the possible consequences of prohibitive parenting, animal cruelty, and the failure to massage one's gums daily.

A puppy follows a boy home from school(where musical oral hygiene class is part of the curriculum), but the boy's curmudgeonly father kicks the dog to the curb and sends the child to bed without his supper. Later that night, a wallpaper mural in the boy's room becomes a portal into some sort of otherworldly elf-kingdom, where the father is forcibly taken to stand trial for his patrilineal misconduct. Found guilty by the elf jury, the judge(revealed to actually be his son), sentences him to a bizarre age-regression chamber where he is transformed into a baby. The father wakes from his cautionary nightmare a changed man...and they all live happily ever after.

An awkwardly conceived and disjointed toothcare advert with a frenetic singalong interlude. Its sheer weirdness will appeal to some folks, but I personally found it borderline unpleasant.

This cartoon was adapted, it says, from the comic strip "Reg'lar Fellers" by Gene Byrnes. It was produced and directed by Walter Lantz of "Woody Woodpecker" fame.

It also was a "commercial" for the Bristol-Myers company, plugging their toothpaste,so we hear a few reasons early on why we should brush our teeth and massage our gums, etc., but that is out of the way in a hurry.

We also get one main thing: a horrible cartoon. This is just awful, not one thing funny and mostly just stupid. The story is a simple one: a nice little boy finds a stray dog, brings him home, and gets treated roughly by an overly-mean father. The dad winds up falling down the stairs and having a dream. Of course, this one of those deals where we don't know it's a dream until near the end. The father learns his lesson from the bad dream, and becomes a "regular guy."

The "dream" sequence, which is almost five minutes, is the really stupid part with most the dialog sung in dumb lyrics. Frankly, this was just too dated and not the normal cartoon fare. This is definitely not something I would ever watch again.

I saw Boy Meets Dog on Refederator.com and I saw no sign for Bristol-Myers both times I saw it. Based on the "Reg'lar Fellers" comic strip by Gene Byrnes, this short concerns a boy whose dad abuses him. And the boy's new dog is making it worse. As the dad falls asleep, he dreams of being in court for not treating his boy well. This dream is a musical sequence filled with dwarfs singing whether he's guilty or not. The judge acts like Curly Howard of the Three Stooges while the defending lawyers act like Moe and Larry. Judge later takes off beard revealing to be his son! Dad gets sentenced to the youth machine where he is turned into a baby. It's at this time that he wakes up with puppy licking him as he turns a new leaf and gets along with his son and his friends. The end. The turn-around seems a bit much for the father but otherwise this is a pretty entertaining short for producer/director Walter Lantz. And besides, in a couple of years we'll meet two of his most famous creations: Anda Panda and Woody Woodpecker...