the audience applauded

Perfectly adorable

an ambitious but ultimately ineffective debut endeavor.

The movie is wonderful and true, an act of love in all its contradictions and complexity

With a poll taking place on IMDbs Classic Film board for the best titles of 1928,I started looking round for cartoons to view from the year,and I stumbled across one by Dave Fleischer,which led to me getting ready to see Koko take over the earth.The plot:Walking round with his dog Fitz,Koko stumbles on a building which contains leavers which control various aspects of the earth.Messing around with ones controlling the weather,Koko and Fritz spot a lever which if touched will destroy the earth.Finding the lever far too tempting,Koko and Fritz pull the lever.View on the film:Drawn in thick marker pen, Fleischer gives the animation a bold appearance,which sadly lacks any sense of detail.Whilst the animation is drawn in a broad manner, Fleischer displays a real precision in the blending of various film style,with Koko & Fritz steps into live action giving the animation a strong depth,whilst Fleischer covers the screen in dashes of startling lightning,as the world turns on Koko.

This is a Koko the Clown silent short produced by the Fleischer studio. There will be spoilers ahead:One of the most fascinating cartoon characters ever created is Koko the Clown, though he's largely forgotten these days. If he's remembered at all by the average person, it's as a sidekick to Betty Boop. While the shorts with Betty Boop are typically good ones, the Koko shorts done prior to Betty Boop's creation rank among the best shorts the character appeared in. Koko's Earth Control is one of the best of them.The short opens with a rapid sketch of the globe by the cartoonist, with Koko and his dog Fitz striding the globe. They come upon a building housing the controls for the planet Earth. Once inside, Koko amuses himself by making it rain and making darkness fall. Fitz comes on a large lever. The sign on the wall behind the lever cautions that it should not be touched, as if it is, it will cause the end of the world.Naturally, Fitz is overcome by the total desire to pull the switch. Koko reads the sign and is horrified. He immediately does everything in his power to stop Fitz, which of course makes Fitz all the more determined to pull the damned thing. Eventually he does and that's when things get interesting.The animation becomes surreal, with volcanoes and earthquakes, monsters, the sun and the moon in competition and all manner of strange things, even in the later live action sequence near the end. A fascinating ending to boot.This short can be found online and is well worth checking out. Most highly recommended.

This is an amazingly imaginative film and one that deserves to be remembered. Even though KO-KO'S EARTH CONTROL came out the same year as Mickey Mouse debuted, somehow the mouse was remembered and KO-KO went on to be a lame sidekick for Betty Boop. This is a shame because I had so much fun watching this film--even more than when I recently watched PLANE CRAZY and STEAMBOAT WILLIE (Mickey's first two films).The film is odd and surreal, with Ko-Ko and his idiotic dog, Fitz walking around the Earth again and again (which they could circumnavigate in about 30 seconds--tops!). Eventually they discover a control room that controls not only the weather for the Earth but the solar system! Being curious, Ko-Ko monkeys around--making it go from day to night again and again. However, Fitz is an idiot and insists on trying to pull a lever that would destroy the planet. Oddly, despite Ko-Ko's best efforts, Fitz gets his wish and the Apocalypse begins! And, in an odd twist, it's all rather funny and makes one almost look forward to total destruction!! Bizarre, imaginative and totally irreverent--this short cartoon is a must for lovers of animation.

A very imaginative cartoon from the silent era,produced by the most influential cartoon pioneer of all times, Max Fleischer, and directed by his talented brother Dave.The perfect mixture of different techniques and visual tricks ( ink drawing, stop-motion animation(animation frame by frame ),abstract images painted over glass, animated paper figures, crazy camera movements, the use of archive footage and transparencies ); the intelligent use of animation and living-action and the bizarre and surreal gags and logical and sarcastic invention places it as one of my favorites in cartoon history. The action succeed in calculated crescendo and the scene of the holocaust is a happy lesson of how to get an efficient film without expensive stuff.This cartoon was produced in 1928 by Fleishers' independent studio, and connects with the European vanguards sensibility like dadaism or surrealism in its revolt against social conventions and its interest for experimentation, technique and the suggestions of dreams .