Mr. Bug Goes to Town (1941)

I chalk it up to a stroke of luck that I caught this movie on Turner Classics the other day, it's a charming period piece from 1941 set in it's own era rather than a formulaic or mythical 'once upon a time'. Scenes alternate between a bustling big city neighborhood and that of a rural Buggsville where the principal characters are faced with a decision to move before their homes are destroyed by the looming threat of major construction by the 'human ones'. Leading the lowland bugs is a recently returned home grasshopper by the name of Hoppity, with an eye for the cute Miss Honey Bee, their match a seeming natural but for the calculating duplicity of C. Bagley Beetle, the insect version of the evil town boss of so many B Western movies.I couldn't help but notice the similarity between the Hoppity character and the one created by Walt Disney, so a quick search reveals that Jiminy Cricket made his first appearance in the 1940 Disney film "Pinocchio". With 'Mr. Bug' released the following year, I'd presume there might have been some borrowing of ideas from the original here, though I don't know that for a fact. Still, there are enough creative elements in the picture to take delight in, particularly the inventive names of the insect characters, like Swat the Fly, and Smack the Mosquito, a couple of bumbling henchmen for the sneaky Beetle character. I think my favorite might have been Mrs. Stinkbug and all the little Stinkers, only mentioned once in passing but striking a whimsical chord for this viewer.Told primarily from a bug's point of view, the picture is delightfully colorful and with a rich attention to detail. I was particularly impressed by one scene during the construction of the high rise when the film artists actually depicted sawdust wafting off a piece of wood being cut to size. Keeping in mind that the picture was made over seventy years ago, that kind of workmanship alone makes the movie worth seeing. Definitely recommended for a family viewing experience.

Wow. I saw this movie and "Up" on the same day within an hour of each other at different theaters. I saw "Mr Bug" first, and was then totally disappointed in "Up"'s follow-up. What a beautiful and touching film! Movies of the 1930s and 40s to us nowadays can be irking with their melodramatic acting and dialog, but as animation the same melodrama and groaning humor can be wonderful. And the soft "organic" lines of 30s drawing AND the music just puts you in a nice comfortable mood and you can enjoy the show with all its little characters: ladybugs, grasshoppers, bees, snails, stinkbugs, flies, mosquitoes, beetles, crickets, and more each with all their own cute little (but not overbearing) idiosyncrasies. The interaction with the human world, from nemesis (cigar smokers, high-heel wearers, innocent kick-the-can playing kids) to the kind-hearted, and to the unknown destroyers, is realistic and fascinating. You care for the bugs, AND Dick and Mary. The protagonist Hoppity is not some perfect superman who comes to "set things right" but a starry-eyed optimist who leads everyone down the garden path (literally!), and every time you think it's going to end happily in 1930s style, along comes another roadblock...! I was on the edge of my seat much more than with "Up." I walked out of the movie theater grinning and chuckling: something that hasn't happened in a long long long long time!

What I liked best about this feature-length animated film from 1941 is the great feel it gives for the early 1940s. It's the songs, the clothing, automobiles, buildings lingo of the day, etc. You feel like you've stepped back into time.From reading some of the reviews here, I see this was a hard-luck film, being released a couple of days before the Pearl Harbor attack. Wow, no one would be interested in going to the movies for a feature-length cartoon during those eventful and shocking days, I'm sure. Too bad, because the folks missed some nice animation would have really impressed back then, almost 70 years ago. The colors are nice, drawings are good and story involving as we root for the bugs led by "Hoppity" and and his beautiful girl "Honey" to make it happily-ever-after and out of harm's way. It's also about all of them finding a grassy spot they can live and not worry about humans trampling them.There is a nasty villain, though - "C. Bagley Beetle" - and two of his henchmen. Those helpers ("Swat, The Fly" and "Smack, the Mosquito") are comedians, complete with their Brooklyn-ese accents! The story is a familiar one where a nasty old man wants to marry the sweet young thing and uses unscrupulous means to force her hand. The good guy, meanwhile, has the decked stacked against him but in the very end, of course, prevails.My favorite part - this will sound worse than what it was - was when good-guy "Hoppity" got temporarily electrocuted and he danced in black-and-white. That was fantastic animation! You know, it's a good thing I didn't see this as a very little kid; I would have been afraid to play outside and squash all those nice bug-people! You never know what (or who) is in that grass beneath your feet!

"Mr. Bug Goes To Town" was the last major achievement the Fleischer studios produced. The quality of the Superman series produced at the same time is evident in this extraordinary film.The music and lyrics by Frank Loesser and Hoagy Carmichael (with assistance by Flieshcer veteran Sammy Timberg are quite good, but not as much as the scoring of the picture by Leigh Harline who also scored Snow White for Disney. Harline's "atmospheric music" is superb, and a treat for the ears.The layout and staging of the picture was years ahead of it's time, and once again the Fleischer's background artists outdid themselves. The techincolored beauty of the film cannot be denied, and while Hoppity the grasshopper is the star, the characters of Swat the Fly and Smack the Mosquito steal the picture. Swat's voicing by Jack Mercer (of Popeye fame) is priceless. Kenny Gardner (brother-in-law) of Guy Lombardo...and a featured vocalist in his band...does his usual pleasant job in the role of Dick Dickinsen.The movie has been criticized for all the wrong reasons. The Fleischer Studios were animation experts par excellence and this shows very clearly in the finished product. The movie is tuneful, the story great for all ages, and the final scenes of the bugs scrambling for their lives upon a rising skyscraper is some of the best staging and animation of any animated film past and present.Do not miss this wonderfully hand drawn film. Also don't fail to appreciate the title sequence with the most elaborate example of Max Fleischer's remarkable 3-D sterioptical process which took four months to construct and employed 16,000 tiny panes of glass in the "electrified" buildings of Manhattan.Do not miss Mr. Bug Goes To Town...aka Hoppity Goes To Town. I'll wager you'll be bug eyed at the results!