Lady, Play Your Mandolin!
Lady, Play Your Mandolin!
| 13 August 1931 (USA)
Lady, Play Your Mandolin! Trailers

In this first Merrie Melodie short, things are hopping at a certain Mexican café. And then Foxy walks in and the customers go really wild.

Reviews
Huievest

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

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Jemima

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

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Jerrie

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

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Cheryl

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

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TheLittleSongbird

Being a fan of Merrie Melodies but knowing very little of Foxy, let alone not seeing any of his three cartoons, it was high time to put that right if only for curiosity. As the first Merrie Melodies cartoon, it's decent enough though they certainly went on to much better things later on.'Lady, Play Your Mandolin!' is practically plot-less and doesn't make an ounce of sense. The animation is uneven, it's crisply shaded and has some nice detail, some of the movements flexible, but the designs of the supporting characters are strange and in a rather ugly way and parts are on the stiff and repetitive side.One can understand too why Foxy didn't last longer as a character, he's amusing enough if rather derivative of Mickey Mouse but not as strong or as expressive a personality.However, the music is suitably peppy and does a great job in rousing the spirits. The atmosphere is bizarre but not in a way too unappealing. Actually the whole cartoon bursts with such joy that it is difficult to not fall for its charm warts and all.Depiction of alcohol is humorously done and one is amazed at what is gotten away with, this being pre-Production Code. There are some good gags here, especially the castanet teeth, the horse exploding and particularly the horse playing its own head as a trombone.Overall, watchable but less than great. 6/10 Bethany Cox

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didi-5

Not your typical Looney Tune or Merrie Melodie, this cartoon is plain weird. Trying to find a new character to replace Bosko, Foxy was created (Mickey Mouse with bigger ears and a bushy tail) to try and build a new brand ... but after three or four appearances, he disappeared into history, and was promptly forgotten.Now, two DVDs include this cartoon and give you a chance to see for yourself. 'Lady ..' is an extra on 'Little Caesar', and also appears on Disc 3 of the 'Looney Tunes Golden Collection, volume 1' (within a documentary about lost cartoons). Watching it now it really does give me the creeps, the animation, the characters, the voices, are all extremely strange, and proof positive that the series was not always, if ever, aimed at children.'Lady ...' uses its limited time to present a look at the sins of drink in a time of prohibition, and uses primitive and obvious gags, as well as horrible singing creatures of indeterminate species, to sing the songs.

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evanston_dad

This bizarre cartoon short is more disturbing than anything. The animation is creepy, and the content is rather adult for the art form. A bunch of unidentifiable animals (I know I saw a gorilla, and maybe some foxes?) drink it up until they're soused, and a grand finale consists of a horse exploding while a bunch of rowdy saloon customers dance around it maniacally. The songs are annoying, a quality not helped by the fact that they stick to your head like glue (I caught myself humming one of them in the shower). If I had seen this come on the screen as a little kid, I probably would have wanted to crawl under my seat and hide.This is on the DVD release of "Little Caesar," if you're interested in seeing it for yourself.

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boblipton

The first credited Merrie Melody is a poor effort. The animation is repetitive, the gags poor -- one involves a character's dentures coming out on an armature and acting like a castanet -- and the songs -- "Lady, Play Your Mandolin" and "I Am A Gay Caballero" are sung in annoying cartoon voices.

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