Betty Boop and the Little King (1936)

Betty Boop and the Little King Review

Betty Boop and the Little King is a 1936 animated short film from the Betty Boop series. It is a very amusing flick.

Comic strip character The Little King, bored at the opera, sneaks over to the vaudeville house to see and join Betty’s Wild West Show. But the Queen tracks him down. This is the second Betty Boop short in a row to focus on a character from another franchise, in particular comics, but unlike the previous short, this one actually worked, at least to the larger degree. The king character is very funny and surprisingly effeminate and diminutive in stature, which made him so memorable.

The animation in this movie is also gorgeous and kind of unique for the series as the backgrounds almost have a 3D quality to them. As the king walked the streets and the camera panned around him, the effect was almost that of a multiplane camera used in the thirties on Disney shorts. It was beautiful to witness. The ending is fine, but I wanted more. The third act is disappointing and the movie had such a fantastic premise with this king escaping the queen’s clutches to have fun with Betty that the execution is only okay and rather rushed.

Betty Boop and the Little King features such a memorable king character, gorgeously unique animation and a rushed, but solid plot.

My Rating – 3.9