10. Yodeling Yokels (1931)

Release date: June 13th, 1931

Series: Looney Tunes

Director: Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising

Starring: Bernard Brown (Bosko)

Yodeling Yokels is a strange mix of a musical cartoon and one with a plot line. Honestly, “a strange mix” is probably the best descriptor for the cartoon as a whole. Bosko is in the swiss alps, and as he goes to meet up with Honey, he accidentally sends her hurtling over a cliff and into some rapids, and it’s up to him to save her. And, for some reason, there’s a side plot with a mouse playing golf with some cheese.

Our hero is seen jumping along the alps, yodeling and playing the accordion. As he listens to hear his echo, one of the mountains yodels back at him. I know making inanimate objects come to life is a given and is to be expected in these cartoons, but it’s still a nice little touch to break things up a bit.

We have some more music-centric scenes with various animals frolicking and yodeling, including some goats, some Mickey Mouse dogs, and an owl, which Bosko shoots the feathers off of it after the owl blows a raspberry at him.

Bosko resumes his yodeling frolic, and Honey hears him and yodels back to him. Excitedly, she scales down many flights of stairs to see Bosko.

During this scene, we cut to a mouse residing in Honey’s cottage, who is sneaking along cautiously. Before we find out what he’s after, we cut back to honey going down the stairs. This pattern of really out of place jump cuts would continue throughout the cartoon, and makes it kind of jarring. It doesn’t really seem like a plot, but more so “Remember the mouse? Look at the mouse! Back to Bosko. More Bosko and Honey... Oh, there’s that mouse again! Back to Bosko!” 

Honey skips along to meet Bosko as they dance closer to each other, doing a call and response sort of drill. Bosko, on top of the alps still, spots a tree and slides down it to meet his sweetie.

I love how smooth and wavy the animation is, it’s satisfying to watch and visually appealing, but we have Bosko getting hurt by branches and screaming(?). Good on them for breaking up the monotony, but it feels so... out of place.

They meet at the bottom, but Bosko bounces up from the ground and lands on a pair of skis that happen to be waiting for disaster, and honey gets scooped up, too.

They hit a rock and honey goes flying, tumbling down the mountain into a giant snowball, with Bosko hot on her tail on the runaway skis.

So, of course, this is a great time to cut back to the mouse. We discover that he was so discreetly sneaking around and taking extra caution so he could play a round of golf with some swiss cheese. Funny concept, but executed poorly and gets annoying quickly. They keep cutting back to the mouse missing the hole and cursing at it in a sped up voice, draining any sort of comedic value from it.

Going back to Honey and Bosko, the snowball breaks against a rock and honey flies over a cliff (with some animation that looks like it was reused from Sinkin’ in the Bathtub). The rock stops Bosko in his tracks and he sits dazed in the snow as honey plummets into some fast moving rapids, screaming for help.

Desperate for help, Bosko knocks on a little shack and enlists the help of a giant St. Bernard. In the middle of a shot with honey screaming for help, we cut back to that silly mouse playing some more angry cheese golf. Isn’t he silly? That mouse sure is silly. We want you to know that he’s silly by cutting to him in the midst of the climax. What a silly billy! 

Just as honey’s about to topple down a waterfall (with some screams that are... horribly realistic), we get this good, creative gag of the dog’s mouth opening and extending its teeth to snatch honey up and pull her back to safety.

And all is well! Bosko and honey reunite as the dog (and a random little dog out of nowhere) bark in joy. We cut back to the mouse who FINALLY scores his shot and celebrates in gleeful chatter.

I’m sure you can tell by my sarcastic commentary, this isn’t one of my favorite Bosko cartoons. It’s poorly executed and feels haphazardly put together, with jarring jump cuts and a lot of repetitive scenes and animation. The scenes are stretched out and the punch is lost due to that—another cartoon where it feels like they needed to fill their quota. However, there are some good parts to it! The animation of Bosko sliding down the tree and along the branches is wonderfully fluid, and the gag with the dog’s teeth is great and inventive. This cartoon was just a bit of a dud, but hopefully there will be more that are better and more interesting (this IS 1931. And it’s the 10th cartoon overall—11 counting the Bosko, the Talk-Ink Kid—out of 1000+ so. Things can only go up from here! Until the 60s, anyway.)