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Limerculer A waste of 90 minutes of my life

Matho The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

Deanna There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

Michael_Elliott Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend: Bug Vaudeville (1921) ** 1/2 (out of 4)This Winsor McCay short has a hobo taking a nap after eating some cheese cake, which causes him to have strange dreams. This dream here just happens to take him to a circus where various bugs do tricks on the stage. I'd be lying if I said this here was among McCay's best works because it's certainly no where near that. It certainly falls well short of his earliest films but overall this here isn't too bad and fans of his should still want to check it out. The one thing lacking was an overall passion from the film. I didn't think the material was nearly as lively as it should have been and this includes scenes that are just rather flat and don't contain any laughs or charm. I think this might be due to the fact that everything we're seeing is pretty much just repeating itself. We see a bug doing a trick and then we get to the next bug who just does another trick. The animation itself is quite good and it's clear that it came a long way since McCay's first film ten years earlier.

Boba_Fett1138 Since I, as part of a modern audience, already felt entertained by this movie, I can only imaging how people must have looked at this movie back in 1921. Animated movies and short were of course still something new back then and it was also far from perfected but this movie simply serves its purpose, to entertain, quite well.It's the second hand-drawn movie done by Winsor McCay, which he based on his own comic-strip 'Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend'. It shows that McCay definitely had a bigger talent for drawing animals than for humans, when it comes down to his work for animated movies. All of the movements by the animals seem far more smooth and they also look quite good.Watching this movie really is like watching a vaudeville act, featuring bugs. This is what makes the movie real entertaining to watch and also keeps sure that there is always something going on. It's a fast going movie, that doesn't have to waste any time on a story or characters.A movie that's still quite entertaining to watch, even by todays standards.8/10http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/

tavm Bug Vaudeville is just that: a series of insects performing various acts (boxing, dancing, acrobats, etc.) while a man watches. Give Mr. Winsor McCay credit for detail in the insect drawings and, unlike his mosquito short, there's nothing frightening here. Well, except maybe near the end when a spider appears and seems to tear the man apart before our eyes but then he wakes up...Pretty fascinating of a bit more conventional for a McCay animation. Loved some of the humorous touches like the potato bugs "boxing" or the somersaults of a couple of other insects. Anyone who has major interest in all animation history especially that of McCay's should check this rare short film at least once.

F Gwynplaine MacIntyre Winsor McCay's 1921 cartoon 'Bug Vaudeville' has almost precisely the same plot and premise as Karel Capek's stage satire 'The Insect Play', which was first produced in Czechoslovakia in 1922. I wonder if Capek saw McCay's cartoon.We have here a series of variety turns by various species of insects and arachnids. In several cases, McCay amusingly matches a particular vaudeville act to an appropriate species: a daddy-long-legs does an eccentric dance, while two tumble-bugs perform as acrobats. Some of the other pairings of species and performance seem more arbitrary: the potato bugs stage a boxing match, while a cockroach is a bicyclist.McCay uses a framing device to include 'Bug Vaudeville' in his sporadic series of 'Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend' cartoons: a tramp has cadged some cheese from a housewife, and the bugs' antics are apparently his cheese-induced nightmare. In Capek's play, the tramp's slumber is induced by alcohol, and the antics of the various insects are parodic reflections of various forms of human behaviour.'Bug Vaudeville' is amusing, and skilfully animated, but insects just don't seem to work well as cartoon characters, unless most of their distinctive appearance (and behaviour) is removed. The Fleischer Studio's 'Mr Bug Goes to Town' was a flop, even when re-released with a non-insect title, and Walt Disney famously had almost every insect trait shorn from Jiminy Cricket until the character was essentially a miniature human.McCay, a major newspaper cartoonist in his day, made very few animations because his toons were so labour-intensive: McCay executed all the drawings himself, without the use of 'in-betweeners'. In his early toons, he drew on paper rather than acetate cels, forcing McCay to re-draw background art even when the background didn't change.Sadly, almost none of McCay's original artwork survives. In 1982, I interviewed American comic-book artist Leonard B Cole, who worked alongside artist Robert McCay (Winsor's son) in the 1940s. Cole told me that McCay once brought a large quantity of his father's artwork to the studio where they worked, and offered to give it away to any artist who would take it. There were no takers, so McCay simply threw out the lot! (Cole spent a long time regretting his decision to decline the offer.) Today, those illustration boards would be priceless. I'll rate 'Bug Vaudeville' 8 out of 10. It's not very funny, but it's impressively made.