VividSimon Simply Perfect

Catangro After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

Kaydan Christian A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Tymon Sutton The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

Robert Reynolds This short is part of the Silly Symphonies series produced by Disney. There will be spoilers ahead:The animation here is very good throughout and the short starts off well, with the entrance of Old King Cole and his retinue. His "fiddlers three" are the Three Blind Mice (this blending of fairy tale characters from different tales continues later in the short) and Clarabelle Cow makes a cameo appearance.The cartoon becomes a bit disjointed once Mother Goose enters the short and her large book of fairy tales opens. There doesn't appear to be much rhyme or reason to the tales selected or the combinations and the character designs are sometimes odd. Jack and Jill seem to meet Simple Simon, but other than the name, nothing really happens which seems to relate to Simple Simon. The pairing of Little Bo Peep and Little Boy Blue works better There are some nice bits here, but it's a bit more chaotic than it probably should be. It's still worth watching.This short is available on the Disney Treasures Silly Symphonies DVD set and it and the set are well worth finding.

Shawn Watson This kind of thing may well have fascinated children in 1931, but it's relic of a long-gone era in animation when watching it from a modern point of view, only without any nostalgia.Old King Cole is being entertained outdoor by various nursery rhyme characters who sing and dance. Only the materials for this cartoon are obviously so degraded that you can barely understand anything they are saying now. A prototype characters can be spotted among the basic, low grade, black and white animation.This is no classic. And will likely be only watched once by even Disney completists.

TheLittleSongbird Mother Goose Melodies is truly excellent from start to finish. The story is a very simple one, but doesn't feel like there isn't a story and more importantly doesn't feel like an excuse to string nursery rhymes and characters together. Mother Goose Melodies is fast-paced and very funny, with some great gags and scenes(in a nice mix of long and short in length) such as the Little Miss Muffet spider and the whole idea of the entire until the ending never falling out of the book, even when Jack and Jill fall down the hill, and the ending with its increasingly chaotic nature is a lot of fun. The animation is clean and smooth on the whole with the character designs not looking too exaggerated, the music is energetic and dynamic and actually includes singing rather than just dancing to music. The dancing as ever is choreographed niftily, not in a routine manner. I loved the characters also, the cameo of Clarabelle, as well as Mother Goose, Old King Cole, Little Miss Muffet, Jack Horner and Jack and Jill. All in all, a Disney Silly Symphony classic. Two years later, Disney remade this as Old King Cole, except that one is nowhere near as inspired or as good as Mother Goose Melodies, which for me remains one of the better very early Silly Symphonies. 10/10 Bethany Cox

Ron Oliver A Walt Disney SILLY SYMPHONY Cartoon Short.Old King Cole has arrived for an outdoor entertainment. The MOTHER GOOSE MELODIES begin when the old dame opens her book of Nursery Rhymes and several characters appear to perform for the King.An interesting little film, with much action for eye appeal. It is fun to spot & identify the various characters. Clarabelle Cow has a couple of cameo appearances, first bestrewing the King's path with petals; later she plays the part of the Cow That Jumped Over The Moon. Disney would remake this cartoon in color - as OLD KING COLE - three years later.The SILLY SYMPHONIES, which Walt Disney produced for a ten year period beginning in 1929, are among the most interesting of series in the field of animation. Unlike the Mickey Mouse cartoons in which action was paramount, with the Symphonies the action was made to fit the music. There was little plot in the early Symphonies, which featured lively inanimate objects and anthropomorphic plants & animals, all moving frantically to the soundtrack. Gradually, however, the Symphonies became the school where Walt's animators learned to work with color and began to experiment with plot, characterization & photographic special effects. The pages of Fable & Fairy Tale, Myth & Mother Goose were all mined to provide story lines and even Hollywood's musicals & celebrities were effectively spoofed. It was from this rich soil that Disney's feature-length animation was to spring. In 1939, with SNOW WHITE successfully behind him and PINOCCHIO & FANTASIA on the near horizon, Walt phased out the SILLY SYMPHONIES; they had run their course & served their purpose.