Ceiling Hero (1940)

hyped garbage

It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

. . . (though this 1940 Warner Bros. cartoon brief contains a plug for TEST PILOT, a 1938 MGM live-action feature starring Ol' Jug Ears, Spencer Tracy, and Myrna Loy). Rather, Warner Bros. provides viewers with some eponymous Extreme Early Warnings about Deplorable U.S. Rich People Party forays in (The Then) Far Future messing with American Transportation systems. First, Warner's Band of Brothers--the Animated Short Seers squad (aka, the Looney Tuners) forecast the politically-timed explosion of Space Shuttle Challenger by showing its iconic con trail remnant Morphing into a commercial advertisement ("Eat Tony's Hot Dogs") to reflect the crass mercenary nature of Nancy Reagan's Astrologer who was then running the USA. Next, Red Commie KGB Chief Vlad "The Mad Russian" Putin's directive--delivered this week through his White House Puppet Don Juan Rump--fully implementing a devious plot to destroy 175 years of American Railroading by eliminating service to 300 American cities (restricting the right to attend out-of-state funerals and obtain out-of-state medical treatment ONLY to card-carrying Rich People KGB Party members who can afford airline tickets) is highlighted when an American 99 Per Center is forced to bail out of an over-priced Putin Plane, landing next to a billboard recommending "Next time try the train--Southern Atlantic" (one of the railroads the Putin\Rump Gang is planning to derail). Finally, the aforesaid Test Pilot reaches a catastrophic altitude of "200,000,000 feet" (which for you attendees of a Deplorable Betsy "Amway Calling" DeVos' Charter so-called school is roughly 40,000 MILES; a good way toward the Moon), soon dying in a fatal plunge, which is what Warner Bros. is warning about for Our America of Today UNLESS we immediately deport ALL the Treasonous Russians, along with their Umpteen Million Fifth Column Traitor enablers.

Typical Tex Avery cartoon, telling a seemingly serious story with a series of spot gags. In this case, the topic is aviation. Obviously, the airplanes depicted in "Ceiling Hero" look primitive by today's standards, but it's a pretty funny cartoon. As I understand it, the line "USC 0, Tennessee 14" is a reference to the 1940 Rose Bowl, which had those scores. And of course, the last line is from Artie Auerbach's character on "The Jack Benny Show".So, it's nice, silly humor to last a few minutes. Since this came out right before the US entered WWII, it seems a little bit foretelling when they show the military planes.Pretty funny.