Boyhood Daze (1957)

Boyhood Daze Review

Boyhood Daze is a 1957 animated short film from the Merry Melodies series. It is a surprisingly good entry.

This short gave us the return of Ralph Phillips and I ended up really liking his adventure here. This is the type of Merry Melodies short that is very insular from the rest of the Warner Bros. oeuvre, but it still works as its attention to detail in regards to boys’ imagination was truly something special.

Surely, the alien invasion was less memorable in the second half and I found the design of their ships very unusual. But the first half is more memorable with the entire section in Africa being racist of course, but hilarious in the parents’ lines of dialogue. This is something that most kids would imagine – to rule over their obedient parents. Thus, this scene was both realistic and very amusing. The animation was also quite modern and stylized while the ending was super sweet.

Boyhood Daze is uneven, but very imaginative and realistic in its depiction of the boy’s dreams and wishes.

My Rating – 4