Young and Healthy (1933) User Reviews

Poorly animated, Plot less, and Unfunny

[tharrx · 4/10 · 24 March 2010]

This early Warner Brothers Cartoon decides that the perfect theme for the song "Young and Healthy" is to have a rotund king (Louis XVI, apparently) grumble about, slap around his Jimmy Durante Jack-in-the-Box, and scowl at his homely queen.

The short looks like it might become interesting when the King brightens up upon seeing a group of poor children playing, and joins them, but even them nothing much comes of it. The King leads them into the palace, but never makes it up the stairs. (There's a LOT of stair climbing and falling in this cartoon.) Warner Brothers animation had not yet reached its era of greatness, but this was a poor effort by even their early standards.

Creepy but cute.

[planktonrules · 8/10 · 20 November 2021]

Recently, HBOMax included a lot of Looney Tunes' early cartoons. While the overall quality of these pales by comparison to their great shorts of the 1940s and 50s, some are quite good and all of them are very well animated. As for the stories and style...well, that is why you seldom see these cartoons any more!

IN "Young and Healthy", you see a very obese and old King Louis....and he looks a bit grumpy and bored when the story begins. Sadly, like most of these early cartoons, the characters all start singing and dancing for no reason whatsoever...something common to most of these early Harmon-Ising directed shorts.

A ball is going to be held and the king is not interested...he'd much rather sleep. I could empathize, as I usually feel this way when the singing starts in these old cartoons. Later, the king sneaks off to play with nearby children...which is a bit charming AND creepy at the same time!

So is this worth seeing? Well, it depends. I think younger folks would rather see something newer and funnier. But for movie history buffs like me, it's well worth seeing...especially since the singing and characters aren't nearly as insipid as most Harmon-Ising cartoons for Warner Brothers. The story is kind of cute as I mentioned above, though I assume any adult that goes out to play with the kids is seen as pretty suspect in this day and age. But despite the creepy factor, I actually enjoyed this one much more than I expected.

The jack-in-the-box, if you didn't notice, is supposed to be modeled after Jimmy Durante, an enjoyable film start of the era.