Candy Town is a pretty entertaining cartoon from the Van Beuren Studios, a film company from the thirties. It starts with a cat couple rowing a boat under a moon whose face bids them welcome inside of him as the two felines go up the stairs to a candy land waiting. They eat various goodies while they sing of their good fortune with some peppermint guards dancing along in the Peppermint Palace. But soon they develop stomach aches and get chased away by a running bottle of Castor oil and a spoon. Still, all ends happily as they wave goodbye to the moon still singing along...Like I said, pretty entertaining with smooth '30s crooning dominating the short. Anyone interested in vintage animation should definitely check this out.
5 Reviews
Candy Town is entertaining cartoon of '30s vintage from Van Beuren
tavm2 June 2007
Warning: Spoilers
Not Betty Boop
boblipton22 July 2002
The Van Beuren cartoon factory suffered for some time in not being able to figure out what sort of cartoons it wished to produce. This is sort of a Betty Boop cartoon (with a Helen-Kane-style singing cat in a dress and the gags are very much in the Fleischer vein, although the artwork is far superior in execution, if not in concept. That, I suppose, sums up far too much of the Van Beuren product: short on ideas, long on execution.
Dream-like candy
TheLittleSongbird25 January 2018
Van Beuren cartoons are extremely variable, especially in the number of gags and whether the absurdist humour shines through enough (sometimes it does, other times it doesn't), but are strangely interesting. Although they are often poorly animated with barely existent stories and less than compelling lead characters, they are also often outstandingly scored, there can be some fun support characters and some are well-timed and amusing.
It is easy to see why 'Silvery Moon' won't connect with some viewers. To me though, it is one of Van Beuren's better cartoons. Not great by all means, but for all its flaws, which are fairly obvious if not as big as other efforts of the studio, it's a pleasant, sweet and charming watch and a cartoon that is difficult for me to be too hard on.
Some of the animation in 'Silvery Moon' is still poor. Van Beuren certainly stepped up in their background detail on the whole when they made an effort to, and that is apparent here, but the character designs are still sloppy and erratic, the cartoon was crying out for colour and there is some animation reuse going on, some of it reminiscent and recycled from 1932's 'Toy Time' (one of Van Beuren's better cartoons from that year).
Concept-wise, 'Silvery Moon' is not a novel one and doesn't do an awful lot new with it. It's also not the most gag-filled or most memorable cartoon in the world and is a little too cute in places, though actually it does this approach better than most Van Beuren cartoons when they go down that route. To the extent that one can easily mistake it from it coming from another studio, being tonally very different for Van Beuren who generally went the surreal, absurdist route when they did it right and didn't go too bizarre.
Having said all this, the backgrounds have more imagination and ambition, meaning that there is much more of a sense of wonder than one would expect. For what 'Silvery Moon' may lack in laughs, it makes up for it by having a natural charm and handling its content with more wonder and imagination than one would expect and not being anywhere near as childish as one would fear it to be.
Dull 'Silvery Moon' isn't, actually it is pretty lively without being hectic, it is far less random and more coherent than a lot of Van Beuren cartoons and it is not a confused hodge-podge of ideas. It is very thin on the ground story-wise but has enough to still be interesting. The characters are amiable and the music score typically is splendid and beautifully and cleverly orchestrated.
On the whole, decent if not mind-blowing. 7/10 Bethany Cox
It is easy to see why 'Silvery Moon' won't connect with some viewers. To me though, it is one of Van Beuren's better cartoons. Not great by all means, but for all its flaws, which are fairly obvious if not as big as other efforts of the studio, it's a pleasant, sweet and charming watch and a cartoon that is difficult for me to be too hard on.
Some of the animation in 'Silvery Moon' is still poor. Van Beuren certainly stepped up in their background detail on the whole when they made an effort to, and that is apparent here, but the character designs are still sloppy and erratic, the cartoon was crying out for colour and there is some animation reuse going on, some of it reminiscent and recycled from 1932's 'Toy Time' (one of Van Beuren's better cartoons from that year).
Concept-wise, 'Silvery Moon' is not a novel one and doesn't do an awful lot new with it. It's also not the most gag-filled or most memorable cartoon in the world and is a little too cute in places, though actually it does this approach better than most Van Beuren cartoons when they go down that route. To the extent that one can easily mistake it from it coming from another studio, being tonally very different for Van Beuren who generally went the surreal, absurdist route when they did it right and didn't go too bizarre.
Having said all this, the backgrounds have more imagination and ambition, meaning that there is much more of a sense of wonder than one would expect. For what 'Silvery Moon' may lack in laughs, it makes up for it by having a natural charm and handling its content with more wonder and imagination than one would expect and not being anywhere near as childish as one would fear it to be.
Dull 'Silvery Moon' isn't, actually it is pretty lively without being hectic, it is far less random and more coherent than a lot of Van Beuren cartoons and it is not a confused hodge-podge of ideas. It is very thin on the ground story-wise but has enough to still be interesting. The characters are amiable and the music score typically is splendid and beautifully and cleverly orchestrated.
On the whole, decent if not mind-blowing. 7/10 Bethany Cox
Good Aesop Collection Ends Weakly
ccthemovieman-123 August 2007
I watched a DVD which contained around a dozen of these old "Aesop's Fables" cartoons put out by Van Beuren Studios, most of them in 1930 and 1931. This was the only one of that had no appeal. It was too bad this nice collection had to end on such a weak note.
All it is, basically, is a musical, but the songs aren't that much, the graphics so-so and not humorous, and that's it. There really was nothing to it. Our two lovers are out on a canoe singing about the moon. The moon overhears them, invites them to see what he's made off (after they wonder out loud). They find out it's all candy, cakes, pies and deserts so they pig out and get sick to their stomach and go back to the canoe. It's very lame, made obviously for very small kids during the early '30s, and looks really dated today.
All it is, basically, is a musical, but the songs aren't that much, the graphics so-so and not humorous, and that's it. There really was nothing to it. Our two lovers are out on a canoe singing about the moon. The moon overhears them, invites them to see what he's made off (after they wonder out loud). They find out it's all candy, cakes, pies and deserts so they pig out and get sick to their stomach and go back to the canoe. It's very lame, made obviously for very small kids during the early '30s, and looks really dated today.
The Candy and the Moon
Michael_Elliott17 March 2016
Silvery Moon (1933)
** 1/2 (out of 4)
A couple cats are strolling in a rowboat singing Silvery Moon as the moon actually comes out and opens up to them. The cats end up inside the moon where a candy factory is.
SILVERY MOON is often incorrectly placed on some Betty Boop collections but rest assure that she is not in this picture. The reason people probably get it confused is because the female cat here is obviously meant to look and sound like her and the sidekick is also meant to look like the cat that Boop went around with. With all of that said, there's nothing ground-breaking here but for the most part this is slightly entertaining as we see the cats go around the factory and then get chased out of the moon. The animation is decent enough but there's certainly nothing overly memorable here.
** 1/2 (out of 4)
A couple cats are strolling in a rowboat singing Silvery Moon as the moon actually comes out and opens up to them. The cats end up inside the moon where a candy factory is.
SILVERY MOON is often incorrectly placed on some Betty Boop collections but rest assure that she is not in this picture. The reason people probably get it confused is because the female cat here is obviously meant to look and sound like her and the sidekick is also meant to look like the cat that Boop went around with. With all of that said, there's nothing ground-breaking here but for the most part this is slightly entertaining as we see the cats go around the factory and then get chased out of the moon. The animation is decent enough but there's certainly nothing overly memorable here.
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