hyped garbage

A Disappointing Continuation

Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

"Balloon Land" is a cartoon from 1935, which means this one had its 80th anniversary last year. And that's why I think for its time, it was a rock-solid work and you could see in this one too that the Golden Age of Animation was approaching quickly. I do believe however that this one here (despite having color and sound) was just too generic for my taste. They created an interesting world (town) of unique creatures, but they failed to elaborate on it convincingly. It is all by the books. This one runs for 7 minutes as they usually do. Early on, we see the town where the action takes place, see some of the characters too and we are introduced to a balloon boy and girl who turn out the main characters. Then we meet the villain, a guy who has lots of needles and who looks a bid like a bad wolf (fittingly the door scene) and who is very dangerous to the balloon population. We also see him kill several balloon trees and also balloon soldiers during the film, which makes it pretty brutal if you think about it. Then the bad guy meets our two heroes and in the end, an army of balloon soldiers fights him and defeats him. I must say there is little in this film that has memorable value beyond the creatures being made of balloons. Iwerks and Bletcher, who made this one, are known to cartoon lovers of course, but this little film may not have been a contender for their best work. I give it a thumbs-down. Not recommended.

Balloon Land (1935) *** 1/2 (out of 4) The title refers to a land where everything from the houses to the people are made out of balloons. The people are trained to fear the Pincushion Man because he can obviously kill them. Two newly formed kids decide to test that theory by going into the woods where the Pincushion Man follows them home and starts to terrorize the community. This two-strip Technicolor short from U.B. Iwerks is actually an incredibly dark little picture considering that the entire subject deals with the possible death of these people and there's a sequence where the Pincushion Man goes on a murdering rampage through the city. This was certainly a highly entertaining film thanks in large part to the characters who were either lovable (the balloon people) or downright hated (Pincushion Man). Another very big positive was the wonderful colors used for everyone. I watched this with my son and he said they looked like ICEE colors and he was pretty much correct.

I just love the good cartoons of this classic era that feature characters and settings that are totally unique to them, and they surely don't come much more different than this one! It sort of has the weird streak of a Fleischer short, but was also extremely delightful, I loved the bizarre globular proportions of all the rubbery buildings in the hazy backgrounds of Balloon Land, as well as its residents. What an uncanny, cool idea-an entire little floating kingdom of rubber! All the bright cheerful colours were just beautiful, and set a fun carnival tone and atmosphere-I want a balloon duck! The most fun that I got out of this was simply appreciating all those wonderful colours and designs. ::: The peculiar-looking cackling pointy villain, and the whole idea behind him was so interesting and sinister! Now what could a world of cuddly-wuddly balloon people ever have to fear, if not to be popped? The simplicity and effectiveness of that little plot-device was such a little stroke of genius because it's so obvious you'd probably never think of it! He sounded a lot like the wolf from "The Three Little Pigs" Silly Symphony. With all the pins I assume being outlawed, it was the one outlaw who eventually ended up with all the pins...ha! I love the funny villainous song he sings in which he proudly boasts of how much all the balloon folks fear and despise him so! He never once actually pokes anyone with his pins, he throws them all like darts to pop his victims. It's funny, if those were 'people', instead of squishy-squashy balloon people, then this would basically be a little slasher horror cartoon wouldn't it? I don't get why some see this as being all dark and scary. Yeah it does have a certain antiquated edginess to it, the spindly walking pincushion is an impressive menace, but I wouldn't exactly call him nightmarish unless you're a little kid. And yes he does 'kill' a few balloon citizens-I don't really think the goofball they had guarding the door counts, as he was kinda too dumb to live! I also thought the inventive sequence where he's overwhelmed by the soldiers was surprisingly violent as he was first trapped in the ball of tree sap and then sent rolling over a cliff to his doom, screaming all the way! But I still found the overall show a little on the tame side... A short that I would definitely describe as daring is the 1932 Silly Symphony "King Neptune". ::: So many of these really old cartoons are so much better than all the soulless crud they churn out today. They don't rely on 'hip', crude humour to win over their audience, and I just plain like the older animation style better because you can occasionally see how much more care and time has gone into it to make it so special and memorable. Now it's all become so much loathsome unworthy computer-generated garbage-who'd have ever thought that the hand-drawn animation would have one day become effectively rendered extinct!? Bah!!! ::: Let your lighter side out and enjoy this little curio! If you enjoy the slightly unusual or bizarre it's guaranteed to not turn out to be a great big letdown! See ya.

A great cartoon from my childhood, because I remember having this cartoon on VHS as a kid along time ago. But alas it's been lost over the years, and I couldn't find it ever since; but it has been my favorite cartoon from UB Iwerks: the father of Mickey Mouse (my favorite Disney character). At first I didn't know that UB created Mickey; until now that is. I also would like to point the excellent voice characterization of Billy Bletcher as The Pin Cushion Man; who also was The Big Bad Wolf and Pegleg Pete from Disney.I love the concept of using babies for an alarm. You know take their bottles away and then...WAHHHHH!!!