Snafuperman (1944)

Touches You

Absolutely Fantastic

It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Uh-oh. Look out! The United States is doomed! It's "Snafuperman," one of the clandestine Warner Bros. cartoons starring the world's absolutely STUPIDEST soldier: Private Snafu. True, he's determined to defeat the Nazis, but if only he knew the distinction between friend and enemy! In my opinion, the funniest scene in "Snafuperman" is the very beginning, in which Snafu listens to the radio and noisily bangs on a series of pots, helmets, & crates while several other indignant officers are trying to study; one officer shouts, "How the hell do you expect a guy to study with all that racket going on?!" (I can't explain it, but there's something very humorous regarding even a mild cuss word in a Warner Bros. cartoon.) As a professional musician, how could I neglect Carl Stalling's wonderful musical accompaniment for "Snafuperman"? A swinging big band arrangement of "Little Brown Jug" can be heard over the radio as Snafu toys with his makeshift drumset. Shortly afterward, Beethoven's famous Piano Sonata in C Minor (Opus 13) accompanies Snafu stressing to his colleagues the importance of filling up those Nazis with lead. And as the aerial bombs are being loaded onto their respective planes, what could be a more appropriate accompaniment than "Off We Go Into the Wild Blue Yonder"?

This time, Pvt. Snafu gets tired of reading manuals ("Don't conk the enemy over the head with a book! Pump 'im full of lead!"), and gets to be Superman. His immediate conviction of infallibility and omnipotence may be a metaphor for any superpower's wartime elephantiasis; he embodies the belligerent all-brawn-and-no-brain mentality that takes over. Certainly in "Snafuperman", Snafu learns the hard way that it pays to read the manuals. Of course, he has help from voice artist Mel Blanc and director Frank Tashlin. Worth seeing.As for that line "Messerschmitts! A whole mess of Messerschmitts!", that line also appeared in the Daffy Duck vehicle "Daffy - The Commando", in which Daffy ribs a Nazi Kommandant.

The message in this "cartoon," another in the series of instructional videos to folks during World War II is "read your manuals." Obviously, this one is geared strictly for the military men. Others were for both military and civilians during the tension-filled years of World War IIThe dumb guy in the story thinks he can be a military superman without doing his homework. For example, the idiot was going to bomb Washington by mistake, thinking it was Berlin. Well, you get the message.This cartoon had a little more humor to it, at least visually, than the other two I saw in this series. Seeing "Snafuperman" doing the backstroke while flying in the air was pretty good, along with a few other sight gags.Note: I was shocked to hear a guy yell, "How the hell do you expect...." The word "hell" doesn't offend me, but hearing that in a 1944 cartoon?? What gives? Was the audio redone on this?

This film, like all Pvt. Snafu films, was designed to be shown to Allied troops to illustrate various points in a humorous and watchable way. Because the audience was made up exclusively of adult men, most of the Snafu cartoons abound with colorful language and sexual innuendo--except for this one (if you exclude what the acronym S.N.A.F.U. stands for). This seems like a "nicer" version of the cartoon series made by Looney Toons and it is still pretty entertaining.In this toon, Snafu's fairy godfather appears and turns him into "Snafuperman" so he can single-handedly battle the Axis. Unfortunately, despite having muscles and the ability to fly, Snafu is just as stupid as ever. Because he never bothered to read his manuals or maps, he nearly blows up the Capitol building instead of Berlin and fails miserably in his attempt to thwart a Nazi bombing raid.The cartoon is very well-made and good fun. And, even though we are not the target audience, it's something I recommend you try.