Betty Boop's Museum (1932) User Reviews

Good, but can't help but be compared to a much better earlier effort by Disney

[llltdesq · 8/10 · 22 July 2002]

This short is nothing terribly unusual for a Betty Boop from the early 1930s-not the best they did, but enjoyable. The main problem with this short is that it pales in the almost guaranteed comparisons to The Skeleton Dance, a Disney short that is one of the best animated shorts of all time. Interestingly enough, the best part of the cartoon is the beginning, when Koko is taking Betty to the museum. There are a few cute bits after that, but the sequences in the museum vary quite a bit in quality. Cute ending, though. Well worth watching. In print and available. Recommended.

Not one of Betty Boop's better cartoons, still good

[TheLittleSongbird · 7/10 · 25 November 2016]

Fleischer were responsible for some brilliant cartoons, some of them still among my favourites. Their visual style often stunning and some of the most imaginative and ahead of its time in animation.

The character of Betty Boop, one of their most famous and prolific characters, may not be for all tastes and sadly not as popular now, but her sex appeal was quite daring for the time and to me there is an adorable sensual charm about her. The charm, sensuality and adorability factors are here and she's fun to watch. Koko has a bigger role to usual and is very amusing, and those skeletons are creepy.

Furthermore, the black and white animation is very good, smooth, meticulously detailed and well drawn with the black and white not looking too primitive. A lot of it is actually very imaginative and impressively surreal, and the skeletons are very well designed. Even better is much the music, which is rousing, catchy and unquestionably accessible to anybody who loves or is familiar with the compositional style.

'Betty Boop's Museum' is variable in terms of effectiveness of scenes, but there is a nice creepiness and a nice sense of fun. The beginning, Betty's mad dash and the cute bit with the dinosaur are the highlights. The voice acting is good.

It is a plot-less cartoon though and does feel stretched sometimes, 'The Skeleton Dance', a masterpiece and an infinitely superior cartoon, it isn't. Betty's depression song is agreed mediocre at best, really not one of her better songs, and the ending is rather anti-climactic.

On the whole, a good Betty Boop cartoon but not one of the better ones

Betty is menaced and forced to sing for a mad gaggle of freakish skeletons! Great Scott!!!

[Foreverisacastironmess123 · 7/10 · 4 September 2013]

In this particular misadventure Betty has her own little "Night at the Museum", and I'm inclined to agree that the results are pretty standard stuff, although I do enjoy the short, as I don't think it's especially terrible or anything. It had some decent animation, especially in a scene where Betty's shadow impressively moves behind her on a back-lit wall as she walks. And I really like a strange closeup shot of Betty's eyes as they move in a comic tick-tock motion as she peers at the snoring(yep) lock on the museum's back door. Such bizarre closeup detail effects were a regular feature of the unhinged and brilliant "Ren and Stimpy Show." John Kricfalusi has said that the early Fleischer cartoons were a big influence on his animation style. Most of the sight gags were pretty dang uninspired, with the sole good one probably being a skeleton cat(complete with tongue) that ate up several mice which could then be seen entombed in its ribcage! Koko had something of a bigger role for a change, opening the show in a fine piercing tenor that way! He's gotta be the least creepy clown ever. The fat chick who he stuffs into the trolley and who then pops out the other side sounded just like a deeper-voiced Olive Oyl! The museum display skeletons were really well detailed and animated. Apparently them being alive was an accepted and even encouraged fact of nature in the coo-coo clock universe of 1930s Fleischer cartoonland! And they weren't even human skeletons, they were some kind of monster dinosaur hybrid bones! The funnest party of this short is the mad dash when Betty makes a break for it and all the skellies chase after her and then for some reason suddenly blow up in an explosive shower of bony debris! Even though I did enjoy this one and it did have just enough of the kind of Fleischer craziness that I love, it did feel noticeably weak and stunted somewhere, like it falls short of its mark, which is really too bad, but there are plenty others which are much better. Like Koko says:"We seem to have a flat!"

fairly run of the mill Betty Boop fare

[Mary-18 · 5/10 · 30 July 2001]

This is a fairly unexceptional Betty Boop cartoon. The animation is clever as always, but the main attractions are only Betty and a museum full of living skeletons. This makes for some cute scenarios, such as a dinosaur using his own ribs to play catch, but Betty's song is mediocre and the cartoon is overall unsatisfying and anti-climactic.

More fun than horror

[Horst_In_Translation · 4/10 · 30 August 2015]

Yes there are a couple dark and creepy moments in this 7-minute, black-and-white cartoon from over 80 years ago, but especially with the joyful music and over-the-top sound effects I believe that this is mostly a fun watch in terms of comedy. Still, even there it does not really deliver I think. Fleischer did an okay job I guess like with his other Betty Boop cartoons, but I never felt they were anything out of the ordinary really, in terms of how funny they are. Still, it's not a completely bad watch by any means. Betty is locked in at the museum and all the skeletons come to life and force her to be the party's attraction. Betty is initially scared, but then joins in as well. And there is a death reference at the end of the film, which is not too common with cartoons certainly, but it also shows that Betty was somewhat different to most of the other films from that period, just not really better in my opinion. Not recommended.

Another Betty Boop cartoon with very little in the way of plot.

[planktonrules · 5/10 · 23 August 2013]

This short begins with Ko Ko the Clown taking Betty Boop to the museum. There she wanders about--not realizing that the place is closing. Once she realizes it, the place is locked and she begins singing a song about how depressed she is--and the various odd looking skeletons really enjoy the cartoon. Eventually, Bimbo the Dog comes to get Betty and the skeletons all bury themselves.

As you can probably tell from my description there isn't a lot of plot here--even for a cartoon. You can also probably tell that the film is ultra-strange. I see it as a turn off your brain and enjoy sort of carton--one you cannot think about or else you'll soon realize that there really isn't much to this of substance...sort of like the skeletons.