It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

This early Superman animated effort is truly vintage, it has that same animation and audio style as most cartoons of it's time and clearly very Warner Brothers influenced.Less serious than most of his outings this is a 10 minute silly short seeing our hero foil the dastardly plans of an evil scientist with a death ray.Plain, simple, harmless but hardly entertaining.The Good:Highly nostalgicThe Bad:Very shortSillyThings I Learnt From This Short:Every mad scientist needs a crow sidekick

Wow, when I first ever saw a couple of these vintage animated Superman shorts on late night public domain TV years ago I was so struck by the rich visual design and structure of them, and I can see why this first one in particular seems to have struck a chord with a lot of people over the years. The story is a little basic, but it's a fun little scenario that serves its purpose as a kind of pilot for this seventeen episode series. There's something simple yet profoundly appealing and beautiful about the way the animation looks and moves, it's so dynamic and bright and vivid, the shadows, angles and images are so sharp and well thought out, it's like the old comics of the 40s come to life, and is a marvellous little work of art and animation. You can almost feel the love and sweat that must have been painstakingly put into it, and it was all by hand back in 1941, no computers for a long time to come. The Fleischer Studios must have had a lot depending on them making a strong impression with this first episode of a specially commissioned series and I think they put the vastly increased budget that they had to develop these shorts to excellent use, as it's some of the most fluid and clean animation I've ever seen, and not just by the standards of the time. For what it is, it's pretty flawless. It's a world apart from the trademark bizarre surrealism of a lot of the earlier Betty Boop toon shorts. I'm fascinated by all the small details that are put into every frame of it, like all the dials and lenses that are on the mad scientist's giant laser cannon. My favourite part is when Superman pushes back the laser beam and wrecks the weapon, it really spectacularly demonstrates his strength and determination. How noble of Mr Superman to also save the bad guy along with Lois at the last second as his observatory lair is exploding. Too bad about the scientist's pet crow though, after the blast it doesn't show him again, I think he may have crowed his last kaw! Some of the short is a little silly, like when the headstrong Lois Lane knocks right on the villain's front door and is promptly swept up and taken hostage, and it made me laugh how daintily Clarke Kent sneaks into the closet with the window on the door to change into Superman right in front of everybody, and sneaks back out and politely closes the door behind him! The music is nice and charming to hear in an old fashioned saving-the-day kind of way, I had no idea that the reason Superman flies is due to an idea by Max Fleischer who felt that it would be more practical and easier to animate a flying Superman instead of him leaping around like a flea everywhere, and thus a new iconic superpower was born! Nice going Max, but when you look at how natural it looks when Superman is flying, it makes you wonder why they didn't have him doing it from the very beginning.. Still pretty dang great stuff, there remains something quite special about these classics, they have a timeless sort of quality, and this short is positively a must-see for fans of the early days of animation or admirers of the Superman character, and 1941 or not, he never looked better.

This Max Fleischer cartoon series is also one that often crops up on TV to this day. Again it's highly entertaining but, restricted to a mere 10 minutes or less, is even more one-dimensional than the later TV series: Lois Lane's scoop-seeking obsession is especially annoying - she contrives to fall foul of the villain in every single episode (Jimmy Olsen doesn't appear at all here and Perry White's presence is peripheral at best)! Since this is a wartime product, the villains in some of the episodes are revealed as being either Japs or Nazis; in fact, the cartoons have a decidedly jingoistic tone to them. Where these excel over the TV series is in the colorful visuals (allowing for a stylized look) and the far more dynamic and elaborate action sequences: here, obviously, there's no restriction on the animators' imagination.

I thought that the Superman cartoons were awesome and the characters were really good and all had great personalities. The animation in My opinion was crisp, clean, and really clear especially for the time. Not to mention beautiful! These characters are some of the most colorful and talented ever seen in My opinion. In fact, they are like real people and you sometime forget that your are watching a animated cartoon. The things that goes on in this series' are in My opinion exciting which is what makes it great! There are so many great ones to like. If you like Superman, DC Comics and classic cartoons then I strongly recommend that you head over Amazon.com today and purchase this classic show today!