Wedding Belts (1940) Poster

(1940)

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4/10
Nice voice work, thoroughly forgettable in all other respects
llltdesq22 October 2015
Warning: Spoilers
This is a cartoon in the Stone Age series produced by Fleischer. There will be spoilers ahead:

Fleischer did some great cartoons in their day and were on a par with Disney for quite a while. But by this point, they were going down for the count and some of their shorts were marginal or worse. This is one of the "worse".

The basic premise is that a young couple in the cave man days is getting married. They are starry eyed with love, so each is grabbed by a "trainer", to teach them what marriage is really like. The bulk of this is of their "training" for marital "bliss". Problem is, the gags are predictable and not well executed, so they fall flat. The bride has to learn chores and how to use a rolling pin as a weapon (at which the bride-to-be is a champ) and the groom is taught to eat inedible food as though he's enjoying it, how to dodge rolling pins and the nagging of his wife.

Comes the "happy" event, it's held in an arena and they're in a boxing ring! The ending is predictable and stale. The only things going for this one are Pinto Colvig, Margie Hines and Jack Mercer doing the voices. As usual, they're great, but even they can't save this mess.

For completists only.
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3/10
Pre-marriage in the Stone Age
TheLittleSongbird12 February 2020
Just want to briefly say this, just in case anybody reading gets any wrong ideas. Actually like to love quite a lot of Fleischer Studios' work, being very fond of Koko, Betty Boop and Popeye, and some of their "Color Classics". By 1940 or so the studio was in decline, their quality decreased quite drastically and their output came nowhere near close to their earlier work. This was obvious in most (not all) of the Gabby cartoons and the "Stone Age" and "Animated Antics" series.

'Wedding Belts' is one of the later "Stone Age" cartoons (seven of twelve, the first though seemingly unavailable as of now), but is a good representation of what made the series as an overall whole with a few exceptions (which were also not particularly great) fall flat. As indicated already, the "Stone Age" cartoons were not a good representation of Fleischer and instead is a representation of how the studio had declined. Something made all too clear in 'Wedding Belts', which for me is one of the series' worst. Just to say, the idea for the series was not a bad one, it was the execution where most of its cartoons was bad in. The execution here is bad but also the premise of the cartoon itself is not all that great either.

The best thing about 'Wedding Belts' is the music score. Not one that will stick in the head for days, but it is suitably merry and lush and dynamic with what's going on.

Also thought that the voice actors did the best they did with their very weak material which gave them little to do and was beneath them, with no signs of phoning in. Actually thought that the voice work was quite good considered. There is the odd mildly amusing moment, but that is the at best standard the humour gets.

Nothing else in 'Wedding Belts' works. The two primary problems being that it is very dull and it is also drastically unfunny. The cartoon really lacks energy and the non-existent plot feels stretched out to breaking point and very predictable. The gags agreed are very tired and completely lack imagination and any repeated material gets repetitive fast, a problem when not particularly interesting first either. If the writing was meant to entertain and teach it failed at both, found it very corny.

On top of that, the characters have very little personality and were quite unappealing, even found them quite annoying. Even the animation, which actually was usually a strength in Fleischer's cartoons, wasn't great, tending to be quite crude and very basic.

Summing up, very weak and yes very forgettable. A Fleischer disappointment and this is coming from somebody who appreciates them and who has always been a lifelong animation fan. 3/10
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