Boring

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

This is a Koko the Clown short produced by the Fleischer Brothers studio. There will be spoilers ahead:Koko the Clown is a character created by Max Fleischer and was in more than 100 shorts before becoming a secondary supporting character in the Betty Boop shorts. The Koko shorts are a mix of live action and animation, with Max Fleischer typically drawing Koko and then creating some situation to put Koko in to create some tension or action.This short begins with Max Fleischer using electric current to animate various real items on a desk blotter. The stop motion animation here is good. He then completes drawing Koko and the turns on the current to make Koko jump. Koko goes off running and pleading for Fleischer to shut the current off. His words appear on the screen in the original silent 1924 release, with a voice track added in the 1930s.Koko next comes across a drawing machine, which, after Koko starts it, first draws a chicken dinner and then erases it, much to Koko's disbelief and sorrow. Then it draws a woman who flirts with Koko and then blows him a kiss. The machine erases her as well, dismaying Koko further. Koko then hops on the machine, which takes off, drawing scenery, a building and then a room, which turns out to be a real room.Koko then discovers a machine shop, which produces a life size toy soldier version of Max Fleischer. Fleischer winds up as the soldier, but gets even by drawing a veritable army of soldiers to send after Koko. A mini-conflict ensues, with Koko erasing soldiers as fast as Fleischer can produce them. The machine shop starts spitting out soldiers rapidly and Koko decides discretion is the better part of valor and heads for the inkwell, jumping in. The soldiers, now drawings, do likewise and Max once again fixes the stopper to the inkwell.This is available on DVD. I think it works a bit better as a silent, but both versions are worth watching. Recommended.

This film was included in the three DVD set "Saved From the Flames"--a collection of mostly ephemeral movies that have managed to avoid turning to powder, catching fire or melting--something that usually happened with the nitrate film stock used up through the 1950s.This is one of a ton of cartoons the Fleischer Brothers made starring Ko-Ko the Clown--their star before they began to specialize in Betty Boop and Popeye cartoons. Like the typical Ko-Ko film, it includes live action and cartoon--with Koko and other characters jumping in and out of the ink well. Quite enjoyable today but also not particularly good or bad compared to other Ko-Ko films.By the way, this film and many of the other Ko-Ko films I've seen had sound effects and music added later. During the sound era, many silent cartoons like this one had this done in order to satisfy the increasing demand for sound.

This is another wild Koko The Clown silent cartoon from the genius of Max and Dave Fleischer. It's pretty good when you can still look innovative with animation almost 85 years later! This 1924 effort still is impressive.I really liked Koko running the cartoon machine in which a landscape would be continuously drawn at the top of the page as the machine moved left to right. In fact, most of this cartoon had some very good artwork and, to me at least, I like to see Max's drawing done in higher speed. He's a real artist and you can see a lot of it here in this nine-minute short.Mixed in, as is normal, is some real-life footage. In this cartoon, we get a toy soldier to turns real and begins to draw clones of himself on the walls of a house. The soldiers then attack Koko, who later fights back with a cannon that is drawn but has real-life artillery. As I said, these old silent cartoons were pretty clever.With no music or voices, I guess you had to make up for it with some great visuals to keep the audience attentive. The Fleischer brothers usually succeeded in keeping peoples' interest in their work.

Juxtaposing live action with animation is nearly as old as film animation itself. Emile Cohl and Winsor McCay interweaved live-action narratives about the animator with the animated cartoon. The next step was taken by John Randolph Bray, Walt Disney with his Alice's Wonderland series and the Fleischer Brothers, among others; they created films where the real, live-action world and the cartoon world interact. This particular Fleischer Brothers short, part of their Out of the Inkwell series, is notable for its play on the notion of creators and creations and for an exceptionally well executed version of the battle between creator and creation that usually occurred in the series."The Cartoon Factory" begins, as usual in the series, with Max Fleischer drawing Koko the Clown, who instantly comes to life. Max arbitrarily torments his creation for a while, but then Koko happens upon a drawing machine and shop--a cartoon factory--within the cartoon world, all of which can create live-action within the cartoon world (sometimes merely still photographs). In the Out of Inkwell series, it was the cartoon that usually entered the real universe. But no, here, Koko, who was originally modeled on Max (via Max's invention, the rotoscope, which was abandoned for a more cartoony Koko this episode), eventually creates a toy soldier, which comes to life as the live-action Max. Max sets about drawing subordinate toy soldiers, whom he orders to attack Koko.This animation short features an especially clever exploration of the interactions between the universe of the creator and that of the creation. Koko the Clown was the Fleisher's first popular character, who in his later incarnations was often accompanied by Fitz the Dog, such as in the very inventive, apocalyptic "Ko-Ko's Earth Control" (1928). Koko isn't as well remembered as the Fleisher's later creations Betty Boop and Popeye, but with Felix the Cat and Mickey Mouse, he was one of the first popular and sustained cartoon characters in film history. The interaction between creators and creations, however, were the lasting importance of the Out of the Inkwell series featuring Koko.