Country Boy Review

Country Boy is a 1935 animated short film from the Merry Melodies series. It is such a fun, Disney-like movie.

It follows Peter Rabbit and his quest for carrots. He destroys an entire man’s garden in pursuit of the carrots. This is definitely very reminiscent to Disney’s Silly Symphonies and although I do not approve of that similarity, I still liked it as I love cartoons such as this one. The animation in particular is wonderful along with the character design. The score is excellent and the theme repeated throughout is quite competent in accompanying the action on screen.

The first half is great and the second half is a lot of fun. The cartoon is amusing and pleasantly mischievous. But there is one huge problem in terms of storytelling and that is that Peter Rabbit never, ever for once got apprehended for his bad deeds. I do get that maybe it was Warner Brothers’ stamp at originality by including a protagonist who doesn’t get punished, but if that was the case, it again fails miserably as the first half is filled with warnings from others so the direction was clearly going towards lesson learning. Very troublesome.

Country Boy has a very problematic ending, but other than that, the film is a lot of fun and fueled with great animation and score.