OK, fine. Yes. It loses a star because it's chock-full of racial caricatures. It didn't invent any of them, of course, and in 1938 the fact that the angels are all black and singing Cab Calloway-esque big band swing was probably pretty progressive - jazz was still the "devil's music" in 1938, and besides it led to one of my all time favorite "so obvious, it kinda works" jokes of all time - Heidi (the book character) singing "Heidi-hi-de-hi!" Love that bit. On the other hand... what's with the big lips thing? Like, every black character is drawn the same way. The white characters are all caricatures, too, but there's something deeply annoying when there's literally one caricature for a particular group and you just keep using it over and over. You *could* make a case against the "Yellow Peril" caricature of Fu Man Chu near the beginning, but - yeah, that was a whole genre of thriller at the time, so you can't lay this entirely at the feet of the artist. It's still kind of jarring to see it nowadays, though.

Yeah, it was a different time, but *some* of this stuff would have been obvious and offensive to non-white folks back then, too, so... aaanyway. It is what it is.

Other than that, the concept is absolutely brilliant and it makes perfect sense that they made even more of these in the years ahead, up to and including a very-1990s Animaniacs homage set in a video store. I'm a sucker for a dumb visual pun, and this is packed with 'em. Hopefully it got the kids reading some of these books, too.

All these characters and the books they were in were well known in 1938, especially the Town Crier, Alexander Woollcott. He was a critic and radio personality who was part of the Algonquin Round Table.

The most enjoyable thing about this cartoon is the swing music.

I remembered watching this cartoon as a kid and not quite getting it. Now that I'm older, some of the jokes that went over my head make sense now.

Bright, colorful and clear audio. Very nice!

cool