Mr. Bug Goes to Town (1941)
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Mr. Bug Goes to Town Movie Review
Mr. Bug Goes to Town is a 1941 animated fantasy film directed by Dave Fleischer for Fleischer Studios. It’s a perfectly solid movie that signaled the end of feature movies for this studio.
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“Look at the Human Ones down there!
They look just like a lot of little bugs!“
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The happy tranquility of Buggsville is shattered when the populace learns that a colossal skyscraper is to be built over their tiny town. This movie came out two years after the studio’s first feature ‘Gulliver’s Travels’ and I would say that the two are pretty much of the same quality.
What happened is that the movie was released when the US entered WWII, so it ended up bombing at the box office, which resulted in the studio never again making feature movies, but also others getting scared so much that not a single studio would release an animated feature in decades. That all led to Disney holding a monopoly on the market, which really was an unfortunate turn of events.
But the movie itself is certainly not bad and it deserved better faith. It continues to be quite underappreciated. It’s not great of course, but it’s just as good as their previous movie and in some aspects it’s better. For one, the characters are much better.
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Gone are the bland characters like Gulliver and others in favor or more proactive, memorable personalities. Hoppity is a particularly good protagonist that is rather fun and charming. The love interest is admittedly rather forgettable and weak, but the villains are pretty good and also improvements over the previous movie’s villains. The designs of these characters are also quite good.
The movie benefits from an interesting storyline focusing on bugs and their relationship to the giant humans. This scale of characters was reversed from the previous movie interestingly enough and it worked. The plot could have been better, but whenever the movie focused on the humans it was terrific.
The animation is fantastic. It’s by far the best aspect of this entire production and it might even be better than their last effort. The palette is colorful, the imagery is frequently gorgeous and the use of some interesting 3D effects led to such a polished, beautiful-looking movie that has the power to really enchant viewers.
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Mr. Bug Goes to Town has a very weak soundtrack unfortunately. None of the songs are memorable at all and they all felt bland and overly short. The pacing is also all over the place and the movie never quite gained enough momentum in its storyline nor did it have enough emotions to drive the plot. It’s all just solid without ever reaching greatness.
