Undescribable Perfection

Fresh and Exciting

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

Bob Clampett's cartoons often were high in energy and fun and displayed a uniquely wacky visual style that one can recognise immediately.Caricature cartoons very much vary in quality, a lot of them are clever, funny and ones where the references are recognisable, easy to spot and are a lot of fun, while there are others that don't work as well as they should due to some of the humour not holding up and some caricatures due to unfamiliarity with the person in question go over people's heads. 'Bacall in Arms' is one of the better examples, it's silly and it's corny but very clever and just so much fun.The animation is excellent. The blacks, whites and greys look absolutely beautiful, even nearly 80 years on, while also rich in detail and high in imagination. Clampett's style is all over the cartoon and is immediately distinctive, while the use of Technicolor is equally striking if slightly less imaginative. Carl Stalling's energetically high-voltage, luscious, rousing, dynamic and action-enhancing music score and inspired arrangements of pre-existing music shows off his genius.It is an exceptionally funny cartoon as well, with some wonderfully cornball lines and names. Plus 'Bacall in Arms' was an example of a caricature cartoon where none of the caricatures got lost on me due to being familiar with the celebrity. The spoof on 'To Have and Have Not' was very inspired as well.All the characters are colourful, and while Robert C. Bruce and June Foray are excellent it is Mel Blanc that once again shows the second-to-none ability to bring different personalities and voices to several characters.On the whole, great caricature cartoon and spoof and a near-classic for Clampett. 9/10 Bethany Cox

" . . . and blow." This cartoon not only echoes the Humphrey Bogart-Lauren Bacall vehicle of a few months earlier--TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT--it also provides an opportunity for the characters on the big screen to interact with the little people sitting out in the audience. Bogart, for instance, orders an obese patron with ants in his pants to "SIDDOWN!" and stop blocking the view of other movie-goers with his constant exits and re-entrances. Overall, the material is pretty thin, and the jokes about secret American military weapons fairly lame. Of course, no Bogart (or "Bogey Gocart, here) screen appearance would be complete without some gun violence, so toward the end of the film Bogie guns down a serial sexual assaulter--innocuously labeled as a "wolf" in this misogynistic yesteryear time--depicted as a literal wolf, for giving his new bride Lauren Bacall ("Laurie Bee Cool," here) his signature call when she appears on-screen. For once, this is a case of just desserts, as the earlier off-screen slap in the face from a physically molested usherette (who may have forgotten to wear her panties) obviously failed to teach the randy carnivore a lasting lesson.

"Bacall to Arms" is a decent Warner Bros. cartoon that centers around going to the movies. The "meat and potatoes" of this film-within-a-film is a beautifully-done takeoff of the classic Humphrey Bogart/Lauren Bacall picture "To Have and Have Not" (1944). The black-and-white caricatures of these two screen giants are great, and a movie-going wolf can't contain himself upon spotting Bacall on the big screen.My favorite moments from "Bacall to Arms" include the following. Bacall asks Bogie for a light, and Bogie obliges by throwing a rather unglamorous blowtorch. He also admonishes a hippo in the theatre audience who is late in seating himself. I also dig the clever stereotyped mother-in-law joke! "Bacall to Arms" makes use of stock footage of a theatre audience from an earlier cartoon titled "She Was an Acrobat's Daughter" (1937), which parodies another Bogart film - "The Petrified Forest" (1936).

"Bacall to Arms" is a true relic of cinema-going in the 1940s. It portrays a movie theater where several things happen. After the audience plays an over-the-top version of musical chairs, a wolf ogles a sexy usherette (is it PC to use that word?), and a big fat guy can't sit down.Then, the "Warmer News" reel tells of how radars are helping ordinary Americans...by alerting when mothers-in-law are coming. And finally, the feature: "To Have, To Have, To Have, To Have, To Have" starring Bogey Gocart and Laurie Bee Cool. Bogey tells the big fat guy in the audience to sit, and then his female co-star enters. As the two stars carry out their routine, the wolf's hormones go through the roof (you gotta admit, with how she talks and acts, it's hard not to get sexually aroused). It all builds up, resulting in a rather cringe-inducing finale.Above all, I think that it's good that I first saw this cartoon now, when I'm old enough to understand what it portrays. Had I watched this when I was a little kid, I probably wouldn't have gotten any of it (seriously, how many six-year-old children can identify Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall?). Especially neat is to think about how cool it was that they managed to portray such sexuality in the 1940s. But hey, the Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies cartoons were always pushing the limits (and the ones directed by Bob Clampett took contortionist phantasmagoria/wackiness to the extreme).So anyway, you're sure to like this one, despite a rather non-PC ending. I suspect that Humphrey and Lauren were probably flattered.