User Reviews

Mother Goose teaches all the nursery rhyme characters how to jazz dance in this decent Terrytoon.

Like most Terrytoons, this one has a decent idea for its basis, but despite a few good gags scattered throughout, fails to come up with much or of interest in its length. The result, as usual, is a competent but uninspired cartoon.

The uncredited staff, especially the animators, does its usual good job, particularly the inbetweeners, who synchronize the soundtrack of tap dance with the characters' feet. 1935 was a good year for Terry to catch up to the industry's leaders in all technical departments, even though it never led, but stuck instead to its tenets of aiming its work at small children and staying in budget.

The Terrytoons are oddly interesting, mainly for anybody wanting to see (generally) older cartoons made by lesser known and lower-budget studios. They are a mixed bag in quality, with some better than others, often with outstanding music and with some mild amusement and charm and variable in animation, characterisation and content.

1935, like all the other years for Terrytoons, saw a hit and miss batch, more so than the other years even. Of which 'Hey Diddle Diddle' is one of the middling ones ranking it in correlation with the rest of the Terrytoons and one of the middling 1935 cartoons. It is an unexceptional, nothing exactly special cartoon and has the same amount of problems as it has the amount of strengths. 'Hey Diddle Diddle' is also watchable, completest sake is the main reason to see it but it's not the only reason.

Best asset is the music, which predictably is incredible. It is so beautifully and cleverly orchestrated and arranged, is great fun to listen to and full of lively energy, doing so well with enhancing the action. The ambitious, elaborate detail in the backgrounds is still great to see and some synchronisation is neat.

A few amusing moments and there is some zest and natural charm. The characters, while not terribly distinctive, are not entirely personality deprived and appeal.

Outside of the backgrounds however, the animation is primitive at best with a fair bit of crudeness, over-simplicity and choppiness.

Likewise, the story is paper thin and formulaic, once again with nothing new. Gags aren't enough, they are not very organised (fairly scattershot), and there is not much especially memorable about them. The cartoon tends to veer towards being too cute and a lot of it is pretty predictable. Some choppiness too.

Altogether, watchable. 5/10 Bethany Cox