Mother Goose Melodies (1931)

Excellent but underrated film

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

This short is part of the Silly Symphonies series produced by Disney. There will be spoilers ahead:The animation here is very good throughout and the short starts off well, with the entrance of Old King Cole and his retinue. His "fiddlers three" are the Three Blind Mice (this blending of fairy tale characters from different tales continues later in the short) and Clarabelle Cow makes a cameo appearance.The cartoon becomes a bit disjointed once Mother Goose enters the short and her large book of fairy tales opens. There doesn't appear to be much rhyme or reason to the tales selected or the combinations and the character designs are sometimes odd. Jack and Jill seem to meet Simple Simon, but other than the name, nothing really happens which seems to relate to Simple Simon. The pairing of Little Bo Peep and Little Boy Blue works better There are some nice bits here, but it's a bit more chaotic than it probably should be. It's still worth watching.This short is available on the Disney Treasures Silly Symphonies DVD set and it and the set are well worth finding.

Mother Goose Melodies is truly excellent from start to finish. The story is a very simple one, but doesn't feel like there isn't a story and more importantly doesn't feel like an excuse to string nursery rhymes and characters together. Mother Goose Melodies is fast-paced and very funny, with some great gags and scenes(in a nice mix of long and short in length) such as the Little Miss Muffet spider and the whole idea of the entire until the ending never falling out of the book, even when Jack and Jill fall down the hill, and the ending with its increasingly chaotic nature is a lot of fun. The animation is clean and smooth on the whole with the character designs not looking too exaggerated, the music is energetic and dynamic and actually includes singing rather than just dancing to music. The dancing as ever is choreographed niftily, not in a routine manner. I loved the characters also, the cameo of Clarabelle, as well as Mother Goose, Old King Cole, Little Miss Muffet, Jack Horner and Jack and Jill. All in all, a Disney Silly Symphony classic. Two years later, Disney remade this as Old King Cole, except that one is nowhere near as inspired or as good as Mother Goose Melodies, which for me remains one of the better very early Silly Symphonies. 10/10 Bethany Cox

Just a quick word of warning - I watched this excellent cartoon with my 2 year old daughter and she was terrified by the spider that approaches the screen a couple of times. It gave her nightmares for a couple of days. Despite this, this is one of my favourite Disney B&W shorts right up there with The Skeleton Dance and The Mad Doctor (she hasn't seen this one yet. I think I'll wait until she's a bit older!)

Did you know that Humpty Dumpty fell off the wall because a goose hit him with Jack's and Jill's pail? This is one of the many interesting takes this Silly Symphony has on the nursery rhymes many of us have heard countless times. As in most Silly Symphonies, many of the jokes are dated, and it is all too obvious that this work comes from a time when simply cartoons put to music itself was cool and funny. However, there is still plenty left for modern audiences to enjoy. Additionally, the music is quite fun and takes you immediately to a childlike mind-set. As in many early Disney cartoons, half of the laughs come from noticing the absurdities and oddities. Before Monty Python put King Arthur on an imaginary horse and gave the king a servant with the job of clicking together coconuts, Disney put Old King Cole's trumpeters on children's stick horses and gave the king a servant with the job of holding up the king's enormous stomach. This animated piece is an excellent example of where a great amount of our humor comes from; and it's still pretty dang funny.