The Merry Old Soul Review

The Merry Old Soul is a 1935 animated short film from the Merry Melodies series. It is such a weak, problematic entry.

I don’t know what they were thinking with this one. Admittedly, it does have very good animation and it is well scored and certainly never boring to watch, but I did not understand its plot at all. The king has a bunch of babies and takes care of them. Are they his babies or someone else’s? What is about that cry-filled ending?

The film was influenced too much by Disney’s Silly Symphonies of similar type, but it’s much inferior to them. It doesn’t have a clear plot nor goal. This is the point in time where Warner Bros. was clearly in a rut as is evidenced by these successive weaker entries. Thankfully, that is all about to change pretty soon with the arrival of Tex Avery, the end to Buddy and the start to regular Porky Pig entries.

The Merry Old Soul is well made, but so problematic and incomprehensible in terms of the plotting.