"Balloon Land" is a cartoon from 1935, which means this one had its 80th anniversary last year. And that's why I think for its time, it was a rock-solid work and you could see in this one too that the Golden Age of Animation was approaching quickly. I do believe however that this one here (despite having color and sound) was just too generic for my taste. They created an interesting world (town) of unique creatures, but they failed to elaborate on it convincingly. It is all by the books. This one runs for 7 minutes as they usually do. Early on, we see the town where the action takes place, see some of the characters too and we are introduced to a balloon boy and girl who turn out the main characters. Then we meet the villain, a guy who has lots of needles and who looks a bid like a bad wolf (fittingly the door scene) and who is very dangerous to the balloon population. We also see him kill several balloon trees and also balloon soldiers during the film, which makes it pretty brutal if you think about it. Then the bad guy meets our two heroes and in the end, an army of balloon soldiers fights him and defeats him. I must say there is little in this film that has memorable value beyond the creatures being made of balloons. Iwerks and Bletcher, who made this one, are known to cartoon lovers of course, but this little film may not have been a contender for their best work. I give it a thumbs-down. Not recommended.
Review of Balloon Land
