Gerald McBoing-Boing (1950)

I love this movie so much

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

The story of a little boy who would only talk in sound effects. With story by Dr. Seuss (and Bill Scott of Rocky and Bullwinkle fame) this cartoon won the Oscar for best short subject (animated) for 1950.Some people seem to give this short a hard time. And I suppose the animation is not that incredibly amazing. But keep in mind this is 1950, making it one of the earliest (if not the first) Dr. Suess cartoon. And there is no denying the rhyme and story are quite original and clever.This is no Pixar or anything too deep. But worth checking out if you area fan of Dr. Suess, because this story gets overlooked compared to the Grinch or Cat in the Hat.

I've mixed views about this Oscar winning cartoon.On the script side, it's still worth while to watch, and so much more so, 50 years and as many big wars since WW2, as humankind is less human, less kind, and less able to understand the deep self of the people across the Ocean, or the street.Gerald is a mute boy, only able to pronounce boing-boing. When extraterrestrials from the planet Moo descend on his backyard, and take him in their flying-saucer, as a human specimen for study, they got the impression that all earthlings spoke like that. Being very clever, the extraterrestrials develop a language based on boing-boing intonations, and are still sending messages to Earth with the only sentence, "boing-boing".On the drawing, colors, and repetitiveness, and also stridency, of the "language" signs, I'm afraid I'm not with the majority here. Even when I saw this title in 1965, I found it too simplistic, and still do. I grant you that I was not the child this cartoon aims at, and today's manga and similar comics are 300% worse than this, but I would not accord this title an Oscar...(First posted September 19, 2003; re-posted after clarifying with IMDb that it belongs here, not with the 1956 longer version of this cartoon, similarly titled.)

If there's one cartoon that helped to put UPA on the map more than any other, It's Gerald McBoing-Boing. This tale of a little boy who only speaks in sound effects has kept its charm for the last 57 years. Besides the effects, loved the music, the abstract animation and backgrounds, the narration by Marvin Miller, pretty much everything. And it won the Oscar for Best Animated Short of 1950. Glad to have seen it on YouTube after reading about this Dr. Seuss story for so many years. And Rocky and Bullwinkle creator Bill Scott also contributed, how awesome! Hope to see the subsequent shorts made in the series, if not on YouTube, then maybe in a DVD collection. Now I guess I'll watch another UPA short there...

This is a witty and delightful adaptation of the Dr Seuss book, brilliantly animated by UPA's finest and thoroughly deserving of its Academy Award. Special mention should be made of the superb music score and sound effects, which are an integral element in helping to make this such a memorable and enjoyable cartoon. Later episodes in the series (of which there were four in total) were not actually based on original Dr Seuss material, although all but the last continued to use his familiar rhyming style. The three sequels were: Gerald McBoing Boing's Symphony (1953); How Now Boing Boing (1954); Gerald McBoing Boing On Planet Moo (1956) - although he also appeared in a later episode of Mr Magoo.