Saturday, May 23, 2020

Bugville aka Mr. Bug Goes to Town (1941)

Having the misfortune to have it's premier two days before the attack on Pearl Harbor 'Bugville' was not a finical success, and in my opinion neither was it much of a creative one. After the success of 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs' Paramount decided it wanted in on the feature animation market, they had the Fleischer brothers at their disposal which is a good asset, and their version of 'Gulliver's Travels' in 1939 was a big box office success. As a follow up it was decided to do a film featuring animated insects, I was aware enough of how this turned out to be a little concerned for Pixar when they decided to follow up the revolutionary 'Toy Story'  with  'A Bug's Life', that however for the most part worked out.

'Mr. Bug Goes to Town' tells the story of Hoppity, a nice guy grasshopper who attempts to lead the denizens of 'Bugville' to safety when their plot of Manhattan garden land becomes compromised by human foot traffic, and later the construction of high rise. Hoppity is in love with a bee named Honey who is the object of desire of a wealthy Mr. Beetle, who employs hench men Swat the Fly and Skat the Mosquito  to get her. While what we see of the humans look good I did not care for the character design of the bugs, Hoppity is okay but Honey and Mr. Beetle just seem off and slightly uncomfortable to look at. There is not much to these and the other characters, nor to the plot, though the music is surprisingly good with Frank Loesser and Hogay Carmichael brought in for those duties. Also the temporal continuity for the ending of this movie makes no sense at all. Still arguably worth seeing for its surreal, alternate universe quality, young kids would probably enjoy it as well. **

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