Best movie of this year hands down!

The Worst Film Ever

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

The version I saw was titled "Bugville", from a 1989 Legend DVD release (I Think--it has a sloppily prepared title card and matches the Wikipedia description, and the promo video TCM has is of the beginning of MBGtT is an exact match, excepting the title card). OK Fleischer/Paramount animated feature (Fleischer made the animated 1939 "Gulliver's Travels) about bugs endangered by man has a listenable score by Frank Loesser, very good opening and closing sequences, and a good nightclub scene (watch for the Jitterbug). Film has too many lulls between the interesting scenes, and in general is cloyingly sweet. Film is a disappointment.This is the one that was released two days before Pearl Harbor. Thanks at least partially to bad timing, film was a financial disaster. Film is hard to find, so is worth a watch. Just have a pot of coffee close by.

The box office failure of the Fleischer brothers' second (and last) feature length animated movie has been blamed to the fact that the movie was released at the time when the United States entered World War Two. However, I think it wouldn't have done much better had it been released at another time. I will give kudos to the movie for being the first animated movie to be based on an original story. However, the story and the characters are extremely weak. The story is weak, very padded out despite its short running time. The main character of Hoppity is thin, like there being no explanation as to why Hoppity was away from town for a long time.However, despite the weak script, I do think there are some people who will enjoy the movie. Obviously, kids with their love of animation will gobble this up. And adults who have an interest in animation will find the movie has some amazing animation, particularly the excitingly executed climatic sequence. One has to wonder what the Fleischers could have accomplished had they spent as much time polishing the script as Disney did with the scripts for his animated movies.

While Disney have been THE animation studio for the past 70 years, there have always been rivals to their supremacy. When this review was written in 2009, for example, companies like Dreamworks and (to a lesser extent) Warner Brothers and Ardman, were bringing out animated movies that could be said to challenge the Disney dominance. Back in the beginning, in that late '30s and early '40s heyday when Disney was serving cinematic banquets like Snow White, Dumbo and Fantasia, the competition was provided by brothers Dave and Max Fleischer. Despite releasing two very commendable films, they never quite cornered the market – many attribute their downfall to the commercial failure of Mr Bug Goes To Town, released the same week as the attack on Pearl Harbour (which gave the American public something more significant to think about than going to the cinema to watch a cartoon!) That this film has faded into relative obscurity is a travesty.In a patch of overgrown garden in the city a bunch of bugs are in dire danger. Humans use the land as a shortcut, discarding litter and cigars, and other hazards, right on top of the bugs' homes as they go. Honey-shop owner Mr Bumble (voiced by Jack Mercer) fears that the future is bleak, and wonders how he will ever be able to raise his daughter Honey (voiced by Pauline Loth) in more secure surroundings. A highly unscrupulous creature, Bagley C. Beetle (voiced by Tedd Pierce), offers to provide her a safer place to live if she will accept his hand in marriage, but Honey is much more interested in her childhood sweetheart, the perennially cheerful and optimistic Hoppity (voiced by Stan Freed). Hoppity believes that everything is about to be resolved for the better, but is left looking foolish when Bagley Beetle and his pair of comical sidekicks manipulate the crisis to their own devious end. Only at the very end, as their patch becomes the foundation for a huge new skyscraper, do the bugs switch loyalty back to Hoppity as they look to him to lead them a new, safe home away from the destructive influence of humans.What really works in this film is the delightful characterisation – all the bugs are cleverly developed and designed for maximum audience appeal. The bumbling villains Swat the fly and Smack the mosquito (hilarious names, if you stop to think about it) are particularly memorable. Equally admirable is the storytelling drive – even the youngest of children can enjoy this story, while at the same time it skillfully conveys a message for older audiences about the way human carelessness can impact upon the survival of wildlife. Time has inevitably dated some aspects of the film, and when viewing it the audience needs to accept (and forgive) these occasional signs of general age and wear. But on the whole Mr Bug Goes To Town is an accomplished, funny and very slickly presented animation with a worthy message to boot.

This is a very modest, very lovely movie with a great score by Hoagy Carmichael and Frank Loesser with a standout number, We're The Couple In The Castle, that is totally evocative of the period and harks back to Penthouse Serenade just as the opening premise (Hoppity's coming) may well have inspired Fred Saidy and Yip Harburg's opening (Woody's Coming) in Finian's Rainbow six years later. I totally agree with those posters who have noted that were the name Disney appended to this it would by now have achieved 'classic' status rather than have fallen into neglect. It's wonderfully inventive, never more so than when objects barely noticed in the 'real' world assume a much greater significance - both pro and con - in the insect world. Actually it IS a classic, albeit a minor one.