Colibel
Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.
AniInterview
Sorry, this movie sucks
Ogosmith
Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.
Skyler
Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.
Michael_Elliott
Minnie the Moocher (1932) *** (out of 4)Betty Boop gets yelled at by her parents so her and Bimbo decide to run away. They don't get too far when they run into a group of ghosts. The big highlight of this short is that Cab Calloway and His Cotton Club Orchestra play a big part in it. The film opens up to a Calloway song and showing him do a dance and then once we get to the ghosts they are basically dancing to his music. We also see the main ghost dancing like Calloway was at the start of the picture. If you're a fan of the Betty Boop shorts then you'll certainly enjoy this one as there are some funny jokes throughout and the animation is extremely good. Another highlight are the actual ghosts that look quite good and there's no question that the music is excellent.
tavm
At the beginning of Minnie the Moocher, an animated cartoon from Max Fleischer based on Cab Calloway's famous song, we see the real Calloway doing his unique dance in live-action in what is supposedly the first time moviegoers saw him on the big screen. Then we see Betty, supposedly a teen, being harassed by his immigrant parents about the way she lives her life. As she cries in her bed at night, she writes a note saying she's running away and calls Bimbo to come with her. As they leave, the go to a cave that has a walrus doing Cab's steps (which was rotoscoped from the man himself) and singing the title song with various ghostly jailbirds and some cats joining in. During this sequence, Betty and Bimbo turn black before leaving the craziness behind in a rushed ending sequence that brings Betty back under the covers of her bed and the note she wrote ripping to just say "Home Sweet Home"...While Walt Disney seemed intent on using public domain symphony pieces for his Mickey Mouse cartoons, Max Fleischer was getting some of the best jazz musicians like Calloway and Louis Armstrong on his and Betty Boop benefits greatly from them. I'm guessing Cab enjoyed what was done with him here so much, he eventually made a couple of other cartoons with the Fleischers, Max and director Dave, like Snow-White and The Old Man of the Mountain. So on that note, I recommend Minnie the Moocher for any animation buff out there.
tedg
Spoilers herein.Spooky in three ways. The first is in the implied use of the derogatory for the black performers. The second is in the bizarre story involving a visit to hell. Of all the strange Boop adventures, this is perhaps the most disconcerting (together with `Red Hot Mama') visits to the demonic side. The more unsettling it becomes, the more you think about it. No Scooby do here, this is real.The third spookiness is in how the rotoscope imbues the ghost on the screen with the personality and very subtle movements of the lively Cab, a man haunted by his own demons.This was during the period that it was possible to have a character (in Betty) that superficially looked and acted silly but conveyed deep and dangerous tides of sex. If these would have been in color, she would be redheaded, like Clara Bow.Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.
froggy-34
The first part of the film shows us a younger Betty Boop than we're used to seeing in the Fleischer Brothers cartoons.Betty is a girl in her early/mid teens, being nagged to tears by her immigrant parents. Betty sings the 1911 Von Tilzer number "They Always Pick On Me". Notice how the animator attends to such details as the bouncing of Betty's breasts on the staircase-- such details would soon be suppressed in USA animation by the Hayes Code.This is the first of 3 Fleischer cartoons with Cab Calloway featured on the soundtrack. They proved popular-- and Calloway used them as advertising, having the cartoons shown in theaters of towns the week before his travelling band would arrive."Minnie The Moocher" is good, as is the last of the series "The Old Man of the Mountain", but Betty Boop's "Snow White" is the best of all.