Flowers and Trees (1932)

Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

Disney's first Silly Symphonies cartoon made with three-strip Technicolor is a trippy bit of business that won the first Oscar for animated short. Basically the plot to the cartoon is that the trees, flowers, mushrooms, and forest creatures are all exercising and dancing and whatever when a fight breaks out between two male trees over a female tree. Yeah I just typed that. From there things get even weirder as we get arson, bird rainmakers, and a character burning to death! It's bizarre but in an awesome way. The animation is excellent for its time. The Technicolor pops as much today as I would imagine it did when it was first released. Disney has really done a marvelous job at maintaining and restoring their old cartoons. The music is upbeat and cheerful. It's a charming old short that's just offbeat enough to appeal even to today's audiences, I think. By the way, early in the short when the mushrooms first pop up through the ground, take notice of what they look like and tell me the animators didn't slide a little dirty joke in there.

This is a Walt Disney Silly Symphony cartoon from almost 85 years ago and it was the one that won Disney his very first Academy Award. Funnily enough, one of the two people he beat was himself with another entry. Most have been a good year. anyway, in these 7 minutes we see flowers and trees as the title tells us, but a lot more than that, for example mushrooms, but mostly all kinds of animals. There are some fairly frequent motives in here. Good vs. evil, a love story between two trees and the fight for survival. For the latter, they used a massive fire here, but the plants are lucky that massive amounts of rain pour down right on time. This one is really delightful to watch. The characters were designed with so much heart and their interactions are witty and creative. In terms of the story, this is probably not one of Disney's greatest achievements, but it's still a thrilling watch at times. The music is pretty nice as well. I enjoyed watching this and recommend it.

Wow, this is the first cartoon ever to be in colour and the first to get an Oscar. What a great landmark in animation history. I can definitely see why it earned such an award, I thought every moment was wonderful. I love this Silly Symphony. To me, certain earlier entries in the series such as the black and white Springtime and some of the more vibrant entries of the seasons themed shorts, while all having their good points, were very poor and severely hampered by the lack of colour. To me it's like they took what was best about all those somewhat failures and put it all together to make this beauty. It never bored me. I know exactly what Silly Symphonies I've found to be terrible and dated and this one definitely does not rank among them. I can see that they must have reused some of the ideas of the living flowers to much better effect later on with Alice in Wonderland. The only thing I didn't really like was the romance part of it. I felt that the whole damsel in distress thing was old.(maybe not then!) I thought that the alluring burlesque girl tree's "hair" made her look a bit like the Bride of Frankenstein! Anyway, I thought living trees were quite interesting and special enough on their own without needing any lovey- dovey stuff thrown in. But at eight minutes I guess there had to something for the tale to center on. Upon seeing the trees I immediately thought of the apple-tossing meanies from The Wizard of Oz! There's only one baddie in this though. Sometimes with these shorts, while most of them not directly being fairy tales, they do have themes and elements of classic fairy tales in them, and some of this one reminded me a little bit of the Brave Little Tin Soldier-with the evil jealous dead tree in place of the jack in the box. Hey, with ferns like that, who needs anemones!(ha-ha) I actually felt a bit sorry for the one bad tree, I thought it was mildly shocking when he lies dead at the end, killed by his own hubris as it were! Goodness, Disney sure played hardball way back in those more "innocent" times didn't they! I thought a much nicer and more memorable way to go would have been if the character would have been cured of his wickedness somehow, and made to look like the rest of the trees. But that's probably just me. I thought the owl that acted as a fire siren looked just like the same stupid owl from The Skeleton Dance. I like animated features that are all about nature, and I thought the whole theme of nature and of having it as the main star was a concept that they executed just beautifully. May it be evergreen forever. P.S. If you loved this I highly recommend a Merry Melody called The Blue Danube.

This is worth watching - only if you are over 14. I do not recommend this cartoon for anyone under that age. It is slightly disturbing (especially for young people) and I do not think they would find it interesting anyhow.People over 14, this is a delight to watch. This is basically a very old cartoon where there are trees and plants leaving their roots (literally) and moving around, creating a storyline. You will have to see at least a little snippet of this cartoon to understand what I mean. The animation and music is very beautiful, some of the storyline is very beautiful as well. Basically the whole cartoon is about two trees falling in love. The girl tree resembles a 1930's posh "lady". There is a horrible, evil gnarled tree who tries to capture her, but the slightly dopey looking tree will not let him have her...This is one of a great amount of cartoons called "Silly Symphonies". This is, almost beyond doubt, the most beautiful and heartwarming collection of cartoon shorts ever made (they were all made by Disney around the time this was made). I recommend you watch at least one of them, as far as I know they are all worth watching.I recommend this to people who are interested in historical cartoons and who like something a little different (infact - a LOT different!). Enjoy "Flowers and Trees"! :-)