Krazy Kat, Bugologist (1916)

Sadly Over-hyped

Memorable, crazy movie

How sad is this?

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Krazy and Ignatz go searching for bugs. As they run around they seem to cause injury to a bee. Ignatz thinks it's dead. Krazy puts his top hat over the little guy. He does revive. Even though the term "Bugologist" is used in the title, there is very little bug in this cartoon. As a matter of fact, it is almost like a regular comic strip. At one point an elephant appears. Maybe to show the artist can draw a cursory elephant. Anyway, there is really no plot here to draw one's interest. In the original comics, the relationship between cat and mouse is significant. There's none of that here, other than the fact that they are together. The drawings are truly primitive and almost like an amateur experiment.

Krazy Kat, Bugologist (1916) ** 1/2 (out of 4)Animated short has Krazy Kat and Ignatz Mouse going into the woods to study bugs but soon an angry bee and crazy elephant show up. Fans of early animation are going to benefit the most from this thing so if you're expecting 2008 animation then you might as well stay away. The animation here is pretty well done and to my eyes looks a lot better than many of the animation titles from around this period. The film doesn't have too many laughs in it but the ending with the mouse and the elephant worked very well. The film only lasts three-minutes but the problem is that not much happens in that time. The two characters walk around the woods and that's pretty much it.

I agree with the previous reviewer that nothing really happens in this cartoon (Krazy and Ignaz finds bee, thinks its dead, bee comes alive. Then elephant comes and is scared by Ignaz. The end.) though its animation is pretty interesting for the era it occurred. The animator's name is Frank Moser who later was in partnership with Paul Terry when he formed Terrytoons in the '30s. Since 10 lines is required for me to finish this comment, I'll also say that before Felix the Cat, many animation stars originally came from comic strips like Krazy Cat and Ignaz, The Katzenjamer Kids, or Mutt and Jeff. It wasn't until King Features' Popeye was adapted for animation by the Max Fleischer studio in the '30s, however, that a successful transition was made from newspaper page to the silver screen. But that probably wouldn't have happened without his predecessors I've just mentioned.

This was a pretty dull cartoon, though the animation quality for the time wasn't bad. The problem is that not much of anything exciting occurs during the three minute cartoon. Krazy Kat takes his mouse friend, Ignatz, to study bugs (called "bugology" in the film). They find a bee that they think might be dead but it stings the cat on the butt. They also find some tracks. The cat is afraid to follow them so the mouse does--and finds an elephant at the end of the trail. Being a cartoon and not real life, the elephant becomes afraid and runs. The end.That's really all there is to the film--no laughs, no great excitement--not even the usual scene of Ignatz hitting Krazy Kat in the head with a brick. Ho hum.