Congo Jazz (1930)

. . . Warner Bros.' animators are urging the World to hunt down and kill EVERY wild animal that can harm people with this 1930 release, CONGO JAZZ. This brief cartoon opens with Buzz Bosko hunting down one of the World's few remaining tigers. When his gun misfires, Mr. Bosko tricks the giant feline to careen off a high cliff to its doom. Unfortunately, he loses his gun in the process, so he's unable to foreshadow how Real Life Ohio Zookeepers recently gunned down the giant ape who got too curious about people when a cartoon giant ape threatens Buzz. If you stop and think about it, JAZZ's animators would have been incredulous at the idea that sharks would still be chowing down on the humans NOT already offed by poisonous snakes, rabid bats, baby-eating dingoes, and killer mosquitoes this late into the 21st Century. Most science fiction prognosticators of their day pictured Mankind enjoying a virtually sterile, threat-free environment in the 2100s, with the only non-human animals--dangerous or not--confined to Jurassic Parks and Time Travel Tours.

"Congo Jazz" is a 6.5-minute cartoon made by successful animators Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising in the year 1930, so it had its 85th anniversary last year. It is in black-and-white, but it has sound and the title already gives away that the music in this little movie is one of the core components, actually the core component I would say. It is still better than most other Bosco stuff I have seen, but the funny moments about the hunter becoming the hunted and some chewing gum music action alone are not enough anymore, not even for the early 1930s as animation was improving drastically around that time and the Bosco cartoons became outdated really quickly. I think only huge cartoon lovers should check this one out. No English is spoken, so you can watch it wherever you are from and won't need subtitles. But the real question is, do you really want to? I give it a thumbs-down.

I did not think I would enjoy this "Bosko" episode as much as the first official one (Sinkin' in the Bathtub), because the start was annoying and spooky in a arbitrary way. However, the episode became better as it went along and by the end I found little to criticise.What I like about this episode is the way Bosko is not so cruel a main character, he is very positive and tries to find ways of making angry people happy rather than making them more angry (this is not the case with the tiger, but the tiger was trying to eat Bosko, so it makes some sense that Bosko whacked him off a cliff after being relatively friendly to him). I also liked the music and the various ideas played into the episode. I've found with the cartoons, both by Disney and WB, that were made before around 1935, play with slapstick more cleverly and in a much more surreal manner than they really ever did later on. This is shown by the body shapes of the moving characters, the actions they make and the objects they use(not all the time, but this is when the slapstick playing is most noticeable).Things I can slightly criticize about the cartoon are the very beginning, the fact that it is slightly repetitive in places, the vaguely "innappropriate" scenes (like coconuts on a tree representing a woman's breasts) and the fact that Honey is not in it! :-( Honey was one of my favourite characters in "Sinkin' in the Bathtub," and she did not play a part in this episode.One thing that people may not realise and may dislike about all the Bosko cartoons, is that Bosko is meant to be a black person. In those days the makers would not have realised it was racist and would have thought it was perfectly OK. If you ignore that fact while watching this cartoon, I am sure you would enjoy it more (if you have problems with racism).I recommend this cartoon to people who like old black and white cartoons, to people who have watched SITB and enjoyed it and to people who like cartoons with "unusual" slapstick. Enjoy "Congo Jazz"! :-) 8 and a half out of ten.

This short is an early Warner Brothers that features a character named Bosko, who is in ill favor in certain politically correct quarters. My take on it all is that the few shorts I've seen in the series vary greatly in quality, some being very good and others not terribly interesting. This is one of the better ones I've seen. Warner Brothers almost always had excellent music throughout their run, up to the 1950s and this short has excellent music, if a limited plot. Well worth watching. Recommended.