Excellent but underrated film

An absolute waste of money

One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

This early Fleischer cartoon isn't one of my favourites of theirs and really isn't one of the most interesting or memorable shorts ever produced by the studio. I get that everyone has to start somewhere but the sound is really rough and grating on the ears, and the animation is just dull as heck and for me it's just a bit of a depressingly drab little effort. It's not fluid with its animation or as wildly inventive as the terrifically surreal animations that would later be put out, and it's clear that they were still honing their craft at the point of this short. Oh and Betty Boop more or less puts in her first ever very brief appearance in a bizarre form that's very different from what she'd look like by the time of her twelve cartoon or so. She has a hideous flappy mouth, an enormous bouncy behind, noodle arms, piggy snout, and drooping gross ears - suffice it to say that in her animated debut, Betty was most-definitely a dog! Some of her famous traits were there right from the start though, like the lilting voice and big eyes and shapely feminine legs. For the most part though it's hard to believe that the sassy ugly mutt that appears in this short would soon evolve into a wildly popular character that would at one point be america's sweetheart and an endearing icon of early animation to this day. That her first appearance is probably the most noteworthy aspect of this short really doesn't say too much for it.. There were far better Fleischer works yet to come, and this early stepping stone is probably of main interest to Fleischer and/or fans of vintage animation historia, only!

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. 'Dizzy Dishes' is a very early cartoon for her, and as well as being nowhere near her best there is the sense that Betty was evolving still, meaning that what made her famous doesn't come through enough and she is not particularly well drawn, pretty weird actually.Most of the animation is pretty good, the detail and use of black and white is rich and attractive enough and apart from Betty the cartoon is drawn well. The music is infectious and beautifully and cleverly orchestrated, putting one in a good mood and enhances the action wonderfully.'Dizzy Dishes' does have some cuteness and charm, and the waiter is a lively character. The voice acting is serviceable, but did get better later on.However, along with Betty underwhelming somewhat, like the post-introduction of production code, if anybody enjoyed the pre-code Betty Boop cartoons for being creative visually, wonderfully surreal and for its daring risqué content that was ahead of the time back in the 30s and wouldn't be seen a lot now in cartoon, they will be disappointed in 'Dizzy Dishes'. Because all of those are missing here, so in comparison to what came later everything feels very safe, tame and dare one say it...bland.Judging it on its own entity too, the content is thin and only has the odd minor bit of amusement. The story is not just not much of one.In conclusion, has historical value but there are much better Betty Boop cartoons around. 6/10 Bethany Cox

Dizzy Dishes (1930) ** 1/2 (out of 4)This is a somewhat forgettable short but it does have one historically important thing that makes it worth watching. The story is quite simple as everyone in the film is a dog character and we are treated to our main character, a waiter, who is falling behind at work. That's until he walks out into the lobby where we see what would be the first appearance of Betty Boop. DIZZY DISHES isn't all that good as there aren't any laughs and the story itself is nothing special. The reason people will want to watch this is that it does feature the first appearance of Betty Boop, although she doesn't look like she eventually would. She has dog ears here and is a lot taller than what most people think of her as. Fans of Betty will want to check this out even though it doesn't offer much else.

Technically, this is the first Betty Boop cartoon--and because of that, it's very important historically. However, if you see it, you'll notice that Betty isn't yet the Betty we all know. The animation of this character is poor, she has doggy ears (as she did in the first five or so of her films) and there is little in the way of personality--she's just a dog-like cabaret singer grinding out a tune. The actual star of the cartoon is the waiter is this goofy restaurant who is giving terrible service to a huge and scary looking character who keeps eating the plates! The ending also isn't very Boop-like, as it's quite surreal and difficult to describe. All in all, a pleasant but otherwise unremarkable little film. Judging by the look of this, it's not easy to see that Betty would soon be a big star for the Fleischer brothers and Paramount Studio.