Circus Today (1940)
Circus Today Review
Circus Today is a 1940 animated short film from the Merry Melodies series. It’s an amusing spot-gag cartoon.
This film is about various circus practices, but the twist is that they all end with a funny or darkly tragic instead of successful outcome. Obviously we’ve seen spot-gag Merry Melodies such as this one before and nothing here is particularly original with the monkey scene again being frustratingly recycled. But still the film is pretty solid and pretty funny at times.
The animation is good and the narration is also fine, but I wanted for the narrator to be slightly annoyed at the whole affair as that would have been so funny, but he played it straightforward. The highlights include that incredibly dark and memorable ending and the elephant crying scene which is so entertaining. At least half of the gags here work so it is a pretty successful comedy flick.
Circus Today has its weaker gags, but many do work leading to one very entertaining cartoon.
