When the Cat's Away (1935)
** (out of 4)
A cat leaves its house to go into an alley with other cats so the mice decide to come out and eat everything in the place before breaking out into a song and dance. This Harman and Ising short was produced by MGM and has the added benefit of being in color but unfortunately there's not too much entertainment to be had. It's clear that mice were a big part of early animation but the story here is rather bland but the biggest problem is that there's just nothing too catchy going on. Yes, the mice go through the house causing trouble but none of it is entertaining. The most entertaining sequence has a full banana going into one of the mice and what happens to him will get a split-second smile but that's not enough to carry a film even one that just lasts 8-minutes. The animation looks decent enough but the story doesn't bring us any memorable characters and even the songs aren't all that impressive.