Mother Goose Land (1933)

Admirable film.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

Not one of the best Betty Boop cartoons, still a good fun cartoon in many ways.Fleischer were responsible for some brilliant cartoons, some of them still among my favourites. Their visual style was often stunning and some of the most imaginative and ahead of its time in animation. The character of Betty Boop, one of their most famous and prolific characters, may not be for all tastes and sadly not as popular now, but her sex appeal was quite daring for the time and to me there is an adorable sensual charm about her. The charm, sensuality and adorability factors are here and she's fun to watch.The rest of the characters are similarly enormously entertaining, with fun appearances from most classic nursery rhyme characters (along with a couple of dull ones that are just there with not much to do), Humpty Dumpty is a particularly memorable part and the spider while a bit too frightening perhaps for youngsters certainly is not a character one forgets in the long run.Story-wise, there is nothing ground-breaking (cartoons taking on nursery rhymes has been done a lot, and a lot of the other times more inventively) nursery rhymes and structurally it's thin stuff with a couple of moments that do come over as a touch saccharine and creepy. It is fun and engaging however still and is paced efficiently, kept afloat by some funny moments and most of the characters. The voice acting is good.Furthermore, the black and white animation is extremely good, smooth, meticulously detailed and well drawn with the black and white not looking too primitive. A lot of it is actually very imaginative as well, and it is the cartoon's best component by a large margin. Just as good is the music, which is rousing, catchy and unquestionably accessible to anybody who loves or is familiar with the composition style, with some clever takes on familiar nursery rhymes.All in all, good Betty Boop cartoon but not one of her best. 7/10 Bethany Cox

I was surprised a few years back when I watched my first Betty Boop cartoon. Despite it coming from the 1930s (when most cartoons were way too cutesy for my taste), I enjoyed it and have since watched quite a few more. Well, compared to the average Boop cartoon, "Mother Goose Land" is inferior. Now the animation, as in all these cartoons, was very nice. But apart from that, there wasn't much to recommend it.Betty is reading a book of Mother Goose stories when a witch (or is it Mother herself?) comes out of the book and transports Betty to Mother Goose Land. There you mostly see various character make cameos (most of which are amazingly dull)--all accompanied with a song that was only fair at best. Then, she's kidnapped by a spider but instead of being interesting, was actually a bit cruel, as a flock of black birds fly the creature way, way into the sky and drop him to his death--after which everyone celebrates. It's really weird how they managed to make a cartoon that was both very saccharine and a bit creepy! Not particularly enjoyable overall and it lacks the cute gags which usually could keep the attention of the adults. Strictly for the VERY undemanding kids out there.

Well, maybe not exactly scary... Almost. It was a surprise to see how mild this pre-code Betty Boop cartoon short was compared to some of the real prime examples of nightmarish surrealism of which the Fleischer studios were capable and free to produce at this point in time. It strangely lacks the bizarre sight gags and effects that most fans prefer in the early Bimbo and Betty animations that makes them so special. I mean, to be fair there is a talking house who states he'll "keep the home fires burning", by literally setting himself on fire, and a pinky toe with a face, and also a very neat little gag where Humpty Dumpty has his trademark great fall, and then, when he cracks open on the ground he's revealed to be full of rats, which is probably needless to say, all kinds wrong and freaky! But that is really just about it. It's not completely free of the outrageous though. Take for instance the villain of this show, a creepy spider who's presence would probably make very young children cry. The villainous arachnid's intentions toward our old-timey heroine are clearly more amorous then predatory. So while I would say it's not frightening, it ain't exactly all lollipops and sunshine either! I wouldn't say that it's so gentle as to be made only for little kids. I love the strange, impressive spiralling effect when Betty and Mother Goose(who sounds suspiciously like a man) first approach the island, I think it still looks pretty impressive for the time. Another more startling perspective effect is used when the lecherous hobbledebobbin' spider is hoisted into the air by many blackbirds on a web and then bounced off it like a trampoline directly towards the audience whilst growling in a menacing manner. The camera tracks right into his wide open jaws-or rather, the image of his mouth grows larger and larger, making it seem to be a zoom-in shot. Pretty cool stuff. Not as good as the more spooky ones but I like things that are all about fairy tales. The setting provides an excuse to showcase many colourful storybook characters . That's a fair big part of this one's appeal. I love spotting all the bright classic characters on display. Overall, I'd say that this probably isn't one of the all time great Boop classiques, but good fun nonetheless. Pleasant dreams!!!

Like the later Alice in Wonderland spoof, "Betty in Blunderland" (1934), "Mother Goose Land" (1933) puts Betty in a famous picture-book setting with all sorts of familiar characters and then has her abducted by a threatening figure from that setting, while the classic characters are forced to pursue and rescue her. Here, Betty reads Mother Goose stories at night and sings a song about wanting "to go with Mother Goose on a journey/just to visit with the dame who lived in a shoe," and is soon transported there and gets to meet all the famous nursery rhyme characters as well as some from other children's tales, including a jazz-playing Pied Piper who gets outsmarted by a rat with a harmonica. Betty attracts the attention of the man-sized spider who torments Miss Muffet and it abducts her and runs off, only to be pursued by the vengeful "four-and-twenty blackbirds" baked in a pie.The nonstop musical soundtrack offers a mix of original songs; popular songs of the era, including "Sweepin' the Clouds Away" and "Bye Bye Blackbird;" and new recordings of nursery songs like "Old King Cole" and "Sing a Song of Sixpence." It's a nicely animated piece for the children, with vivid depictions of the famed Mother Goose characters, but it doesn't offer the inspired gags that have made other Betty Boop cartoons so attractive to an adult audience.