Surf Bored

The Noveltoons team goes for cute rather than funny in this mediocre Little Audrey effort. Audrey keeps trying to sneak her dog onto a beach with a "No Dogs" sign and the lifeguard keeps catching her and throwing the dog off until the usual ending in which the dog saves the lifeguard.

The result is pretty blah for my taste, dog lover though I am. There are a couple of decent gags, but it's pretty thin for any adults looking at the cartoon. Twenty years earlier, when the Fleischers were running the studio, they jammed as many jokes into each cartoon as they could. By this time, the efforts seem rote and the work is constrained by the inflation that was eating into budgets by this stage.

Very much one of the weaker Little Audrey cartoons from personal opinion. Not bad as such, just that it is a cartoon that doesn't really utilise what made the best Little Audrey cartoons work so well.

Starting with what is good about 'Surf Bored', the animation is rich and colourful, with very meticulous and beautifully drawn backgrounds, a darker but no less luscious colour palette and well-rendered character designs that don't look too stiff. Winston Sharples provides yet another outstanding music score, even in mediocre or worse cartoons Sharples' music was never among the flaws (if anything always one of the strengths or the best asset).

Also love the lusciousness of the orchestration here and how characterful, haunting and whimsical the music was without going overboard in either, even better was how well it fitted in the cartoon and how it merged with the action. The main song is very infectious too.

There are a couple of amusing moments here, like with the banana peel and where Little Audrey tries to get her folding chair to stay put. Little Audrey is charming without being too sweet, the atmosphere is cute and the voice acting is good.

However, the story is structurally thin, and is so slight (even for a Little Audrey cartoon) that it struggles to have enough material for the whole 6 or 7 minutes it runs. Yet another example also of a Little Audrey cartoon that doesn't work as successfully when not based around a dream or message.

'Surf Bored's' material, more slapstick-oriented than usual, is hit and miss, parts are amusing but others feel tired and too much cuteness replaces imagination and consistent humour. The climax is pretty predictable and not particularly exciting, its darker tone feeling at odds too with the lighter and cuter tone of what happened previously.

In summary, watchable but not one of Little Audrey's best. For examples of that, see 'Butterscotch and Soda' and 'Song of the Birds'. 5/10 Bethany Cox