The Village Barber (1930) User Reviews

Everything Is Living In A Cartoon

[ccthemovieman-1 · 7/10 · 29 April 2008]

Have you ever noticed that most everything is alive in many cartoons? This one certainly is an example of that. In other words, inanimate objects somehow are people/ animals/monsters..... whatever.

In this one, Flip The Frog is a barber and his electric shaver is actually a mouth. When he's munched enough hairs off some customer, the "shaver" spits them out! The strap that hones the razor blade kicks Flip in the butt after being used. The barber's pole outside comes alive (and rotates thanks to little bugs on a treadmill inside.).

Those, and a bunch of other sight gags - i.e..fleas backing their bags and leaving a hairy beast after being shaved, a big spider playing the piano, dancing flowers and a dancing hot stove - dominate this somewhat-clever Flip The Frog cartoon. It wasn't bad and is a real window on the era when there were big poles outside the barber shop, and barbers used mugs and straight razors, etc. The only weak spot was the ending. It looked like they didn't know to end this cartoon.

Flip's shop certainly offered a lot for your money: complete haircut head-to-toe, a manicure, shoes shined, live entertainment

This cartoon was viewed on a DVD called "Cartoons That Time Forget: The UB Iwerks Collection Vol. 1."

Flip the barber

[TheLittleSongbird · 7/10 · 24 May 2018]

Ub Iwerks's Flip the Frog series of cartoons was short-lived, only lasting from 1930 to 1933. On the most part the Flip the Frog cartoons are not great or cartoon/animated masterpieces and it is sort of understandable as to why Flip didn't make it bigger. However they are far from terrible ones either and do hold some interest.

Despite not being historically significant like 'Fiddlesticks' was, 'The Village Barber' for me is among the best Flip the Frog cartoons and easily the best up to this very early stage of the series. It is not a great cartoon and has faults but there are things here that improve quite a bit and done much better than many other Flip the Frog cartoons.

A lot of good things in 'The Village Barber'. The animation is decent enough, with beautifully detailed backgrounds, nice shading and characters that aren't drawn too crudely. The music makes even more of an impact, it is lushly and cleverly orchestrated, full of lively energy and not only adds brilliantly to the action it enhances it.

There are more sight gags than the previous Flip the Frog cartoons, and they are surprisingly funny. There is a nice natural charm, some zest and it does a better job than most Flip the Frog cartoons in not falling into sentimentality or cutesiness. Really liked the lively and surprisingly and wonderfully strange support.

However, 'The Village Barber' has faults. Flip is still not a particularly compelling character personality-wise, a general fault with his cartoons. The story is very thin, there are signs of one at the start but it is completely neglected for the rest of the cartoon.

Occasionally the pace drags and the ending is odd, abrupt and afterthought-like, have to agree that there was a sense of not knowing how to end it.

In conclusion, decent and one of the better cartoons in the Flip the Frog series. 7/10 Bethany Cox

The title says it all here.

[llltdesq · 7/10 · 26 June 2003]

The plot here in this early Flip the Frog-Flip opens a barber shop. The rest is sight gags, some very funny, but little else and the pacing is a bit slow. The cartoon is made, however, by an especially good sight gag right at the beginning and by the strangest barber shop quartet in cinematic history, that I've seen, at any rate. Good, but I've seen too much that as better to ever rate it higher than "good". Worth watching.