Release date: July 29th, 1933
Series: Looney Tunes
Director: Hugh Harman
Starring: Johnny Murray (Bosko, Singing Robot), Marcellite Garner (Honey), Rudy Ising (Robot, Ben Bernie), Lee Millar (Bruno)
Only 3 more Bosko cartoons left! How time flies! Here, Bosko builds a robot so he can get out of doing chores, but a malfunction assets he may just be better off scrubbing the dishes.
For a change, the cartoon opens with Honey. She’s happily scrubbing away at her window, and as she reaches on her tiptoes, we get an up-skirt shot of her. She notices the audience and shoves her skirt down and continues her work. Very amusing gag.
Bosko passes by her window on the outside. Like the casanova he is, he writes “I love you” in the glass. I’m always glad to see him have some sort of charisma or personality. He walks out of sight, and Honey comes back to the window. She pooh-poohs it, thinking some random stranger came by, but Bosko surprises her and she rescinds her earlier grudge.
Bosko, accompanied by Bruno, meets her at the front door, wooing her with some flowers that he stole last minute from her flower box. Happily she takes him by the hand and leads him inside, telling him how happy she is to have some help in washing the dishes.
The flowers aren’t the only thing that wilt as they droop out of Bosko’s grip—a great little gag and effective way at displaying emotions. Bosko frowns and suddenly laughs, saying “Who, me? Washing dishes? Not me, not me!” we fade out on him laughing...
...possibly the most entertaining transition we’ve had so far. Honey merrily sings “Ain’t We Got Fun” while Bosko begrudgingly scrubs away at the dishes. The little frilly apron is an added bonus for his humiliation. How terribly mortifying, right?
However, Bosko’s optimism pokes through as he stacks the plates, shuffling them like cards and erecting his own leaning tower of porcelain. His sour mood is left behind as he skips around the house with the plates, Honey warning him to be careful. He doesn’t listen and skips outside to the porch step.
There’s a shot of Honey doing a take while a crash rings in everybody’s ears. Sure enough, Bosko sits on top of a protective coating of broken porcelain in a daze. He spots honey and awkwardly whistles, rocking back and forth, his “innocent as a lamb” approach satirized as he actually turns briefly into a guilty lamb. The timing in this short is impeccable, the jokes really pack a punch!
A newspaper on the ground distracts Bosko from his guilt. It reads “ROBOTS WILL DO WORK OF HUNDRED MEN SAY TECHNOCRATS”. Ah, yes! The perfect way to never scrub a dish again: make your robot do it! Bosko immediately darts to his garage to perform some handiwork.
With various scraps and pieces (including a heavy wood stove for the torso), Bosko builds his mechanical man. I love the music in the background—it’s honest and happy, like Bosko’s personality. Him struggling to carry the wood stove to the beat of the music is a very nice accent, too. Honey sees Bosko tinkering in his garage through her window and demands that he help her, but he shrugs her off. An engine is the finishing touch, and his robot pal comes to life.
The robot sputters and jerks, but comes to a halt long enough for Bosko to pull a button that says “Free Wheeling”.
“Free Wheeling” is short for “Murder Machine”. The robot chases Bosko around frenetically, and he seeks honey’s Honey for refuge. There’s a great gag of the robot plowing through a number of rooms, the doors adding up in a stack and sandwiching Bosko in the middle. The robot then sets his sights on honey, who squirts perfume in his face.
Fun fact: perfume turns you gay. The robot acts effeminately, throwing sheets of toilet paper around happily while Bosko bangs out a tune on the piano to keep him at bay. All of the sudden, it snaps out of its fugue and turns violent.
With some quick thinking, honey shoves a record of "Mary Had a Little Lamb" inside the belly of the beast. The robot launches into a chorus of "Mary Had a Little Lamb", he, Honey, and Bosko doing the trademark “Bosko dance”. I love that, how one second he’s trying to obliterate them and then the next they’re happily swaying along to some music. Unfortunately for Honey and Bosko, the record has a crack in it. The robot stutters at “white as— white as— white as—“ and once more reverts to a frenzy.
Hand in hand, Bosko and Honey dart out of the house to save their skin. Bruno is still waiting patiently at the porch step, and is happy to see the robot, unaware of his crimes. The robot greets him warmly by using a telephone wire to electrocute him. Jesus! Always gotta have that cartoon violence!
Bruno joins in the chase away from the sadistic hunk of metal. There’s a radio inside of the robot that signals “You are now in the hands of the dear old maestro”, a reference to Ben Bernie. Bruno is running at a crawl (if possible), but even he has managed to hide in the junk yard that Honey and Bosko are hiding in.
Bosko finds a spare stick of dynamite and tosses it at the killing machine, killing the killer. There’s some great animation of the robot malfunctioning (like the screen on its chest changing dates) as we iris out.
A REALLY good cartoon! Probably one of the best Boskos we’ve seen! Another addition to my favorites list. The pacing was nice and snappy, and the timing on the gags were done to a t. I can’t get enough of the gag where we fade out on Bosko laughing at the idea of doing dishes, and next thing you know he’s furiously scrubbing some porcelain. Bosko had some personality, and Honey even more so. Bosko’s attempts to woo honey at the beginning were endearing and likable. Overall, I certainly recommend this cartoon! It got some good laughs out of me.
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