Broadway Folly (1930) Online

The first thing I noticed about this Walter Lanz cartoon is the big credit on the opening titles to Walt Disney, from whom Oswald had been stolen two years earlier. At the moment, Disney was the biggest thing in animation and I'm sure they thought it would help sell the cartoon.

This is one of the synchronized Oswalds, which means that 90% of the gags are set up to work with a simple musical background. The gags are of the most extreme 'rubber hose' variety imaginable: everything, houses, cars and especially bodies, is infinitely stretchable. These are very good examples of this sort of animation and if the figures are primitively drawn, their mutability fits right in.

There's also a long repeating series of gags as a small baby walks through the set, asking "Is my father in there?" The payoff, at the end, isn't worth it.

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.

Of the Walter Lantz era, there were a fair share of disappointments while also some good ones. While not a classic by all means, far from it, 'Broadway Folly' is generally one of Lantz's better Oswald cartoons. Oswald is endearing as ever and the premise allows him to be in character as seen with the cartoons made in the Disney and Winkler Oswald cartoons.

'Broadway Folly' has its debits. The animation is pretty primitive, particularly in some rough character designs and some hackneyed and incomplete-looking transitions. The ending is strangely unsatisfying and like the cartoon had run out of gas, with a cartoon with this kind of premise one expects a funnier and inventive ending that feels rounded off, this one feels somewhat limp.

One doesn't see the Oswald cartoons for their stories, but some of 'Broadway Folly' is thin and rather predictable, there are cartoons and even films with similar themes made since and most have done it much better and with more consistency.

Synchronisation is good however as is the sound, while Oswald's movements are mostly natural. Many of the gags hit the mark, with 'Broadway Folly' being one of the funnier and imaginative Lantz Oswald cartoons. The repeated gag luckily didn't get too tiresome, even if it could have done with more variation perhaps.

As said, no complaints can be made about Oswald. The cartoon is also notable for being the last Oswald cartoon to feature a laughing Oswald in the title.

In conclusion, not great but decent. 6/10 Bethany Cox