Who payed the critics

I gave this film a 9 out of 10, because it was exactly what I expected it to be.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Walt Disney was on a role with these Silly Symphonies, letting his imagination run wild with clever and miraculous sequences of magic. Here, a baby is transported to Lullaby Land while dreaming, where we see a display of pacifiers, diapers, bottles, and blankets come to life. We also see anti-babies stuff such as scissors, knives, fountain pens, and matches, which haunt the kid and his doll dog as well. It is nice to include some baby-themed characters in the cartoon as well, including the Boogeyman and the Sandman. Neat stuff here.Grade B

The Silly Symphonies explored many different themes and motifs when Disney started producing them in Technicolor. Lullaby Land looks at the inner world of an infant. Storyman Pinto Colvig (Goofy's voice actor), recalled a few years after this short was released that the idea came about when he and director Wilfred Jackson were talking about their experiences at fatherhood. Jackson then proposed an idea for a Silly Symphony "to picture the thoughts of what might be going through a year-old baby's head while he's asleep". According to Colvig, Walt jumped at the idea when he became a father himself.Like most Symphonies in the early 30's, there isn't much narrative besides plenty of lush and colorful visuals. The narrative follows an infant and his plush dog (come to life) as he is whisped away to a fantasy land while being sung a lullaby. Disney will revisit this theme five years later with Wynken, Blynken, and Nod (1938), only with the state of the art multi-plane camera which gave the short a more lush and three-dimensional quality.This still manages to be a lush and very sentimental film more than 80 years later. Parents with infants shall enjoy and appreciate this film.

A hideous ginger baby is sung to sleep by his mother and imagines a surreal dreamland. The dream gradually changes from restful, to dangerous, to scary, and then back to peaceful. It's hardly a classic, and it features that hideous old Disney animation that is vivid yet aesthetically displeasing, but if you were to watch this late at night it would make you feel sleepy, so I guess it works in some weird way. There are no voices other than the disembodied singing and no recognizable Disney characters. It's directed by an uncredited Wilfred Jackson, who went on to direct Peter Pan, Cinderella, and Alice in Wonderland.Does anyone else think that the little baby looks likes 1980s Commodore 64 character Jack the Nipper?

I am apparently a tough judge of cartoons. While I noticed one reviewer gave EVERY Disney short from the 30s a 10, I am much harder to please. Sure, I've awarded some 10s and quite a few 9s--but also a few 2s and 3s, as some of these early cartoons are just dreadful despite the fine standard of animation they have achieved under Walt Disney's guidance. That's because through the 1930s, cartoons were nothing like they were in the 40s and 50s. They were rarely edgy and the emphasis in many of the toons was on cuteness--something many today would find hard to take. Disney actually avoided this more than many of the companies of the era, as the Harmon-Ising singing cartoons were REALLY cutesy and saccharine compared to Disney's. However, sometimes Disney released one that borders today on torture to have to watch--and I would sure like to see cartoons like "Lullaby Land" used to interrogate prisoners--though I am sure that Amnesty International and other human rights groups would complain about this being inhuman torture!!! This cartoon finds an especially cute little toddler in some sort of dream world where again and again, he nearly kills himself playing with matches and doing other things kids are NOT supposed to do. I really think the cartoon was intended as some sort of indoctrination for the young ones--to tell them what not to do in a very heavy-handed sort of manner. To make it worse, there is a hellishly saccharine chorus that sings about safety!! Ugghhh!!! Make it stop!!! When the green Boogeymen appear, I assumed it would get better--but then they began singing and dancing, too!! Ultimately, some creepy wizard appears and rescues the tyke. It's the Sandman--no, not of the Neil Gaiman variety, but the type that sings the little kid to sleep (though I thought this was all already a dream?!). Ultimately, it ends on a note so sickeningly sweet that I am about to go into a diabetic coma. Please...do not watch this unless you are a masochist!