1h 25min | Animation, Comedy, Family | 24 October 1962 | Color, WS
Director: Abe Levitow
Writers: Dorothy Jones, Chuck Jones | 2 more credits
Stars: Judy Garland, Robert Goulet, Red Buttons, Paul Frees, Hermione Gingold.
Watched online, excellent print.
11 songs in the Soundtracks, all by Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg.
With all the people involved that I like (C.Jones, JG, HA+YH), it's amazing that I don't like this.
Somehow the UPA "animation", which includes here of a lot of single cells being panned, and the fact that Jones didn't direct, so the pacing is slow, and the songs are about cats, plus the singing of RG has never been appealing to me: too stiff.
C.Jones' work was always best when Michael Maltese and Maurice Noble were involved, and they are absent here. Interesting that the characters look like Jones' design, when character design is usually the domain of the director, at least in the old days of cartoon shorts.
The most interesting thing is the imitation of Impressionist art, not only in the sequence when Musette sits for various portraits, but throughout.
The film is not quite bad enough to give it a 5, but maybe next time watch it with faster playback (if available on the platform (I've used that setting on YouTube with audio preserved).
UPA, Warner, dir. Levitow; 6-
