Sick Product of a Sick System

Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

"Begone Dull Care" is an 8-minute short film by Scottish animation filmmaker Norman McLaren. He made this one shortly before his Academy Award win for "Neighbors", also his most known work probably. McLaren was in his mid-30s here back in 1949. So this is an over 65-year-old film and it's an experimental piece. It certainly has a touch of Stan Brakhage to it, but I have to say it was not really a success for me in terms of the visual side. The audio was better, some nice music and obviously it was closely connected with the animation being on par with what we heard in this short film. However, the whole thing just stayed underwhelming for me and given the fact that the pretty talented Evelyn Lambart also worked on this one, I hoped for more. Not recommended.

With the recent death of jazz great Oscar Peterson, Amid at Cartoon Brew showed his tribute by linking from YouTube two animated shorts scored by him. One was directed by John Hubley. This one, Begone Dull Care, was done by Norman McLaren and Evelyn Lambart with the abstract paint done directly on film. Peterson provides three jazz pieces with the second one just played to white lines on black background and the other two mixed with that and various other colors, mostly red. Wonderful Jackson Pollock-like images that might have inspired many a trip during the '60s! What a great tribute to a recently departed music genius from Canada.

A masterpiece of hand-drawn & experimental cinema! McLaren & Lambert pulled out all the stops for the wonderful viewing experience that would become BEGONE DULL CARE, a film made directly by hand through painting, etching, drawing, and pattern- rolling onto clear 35 mm film stock. The phantasmagoria of colours, patterns, images and surreal optical trickery of perceived depth of field are blended together PERFECTLY with the rollicking Jazz soundtrack provided by Canadian Jazz-pianist extraordinaire, Oscar Peterson, and his band. Although this style of animation has been attempted many times, by countless others, both before and since, NONE have come close to Norman McLaren & Evelyn Lambert's stunning accomplishment: BEGONE DULL CARE!10/10. A resounding visual triumph.........and just so much fun to watch!

This film is one of the better works of abstract animation. McLaren succeeds at precisely timing his drawn-on-film animation to Peterson's music. Also, McLaren's mastery of depth in his painting is wonderful.