Rasslin' Round (1934) User Reviews

Rather cute...and better than most Willie Whopper cartoons.

[planktonrules · 7/10 · 8 February 2017]

Willie Whopper was an interesting sort of character from Ub Iwerks. Not only was the kid a cute habitual liar, but his cartoons were pretty enjoyable...a big improvement over Ub's first character with his studio, Flip the Frog!

In this installment, as Willie is shining shoes, he's telling yet another grand fib. This time he talks about the time he wrestled the world champion wrestler, the Masked Marvel. And again and again, as it looked as if Willie would be pummeled he got the best of this big brute by using his brains. In the end, of course, there's a punchline to all this.

The story is fun...which makes it worth seeing as many of Iwerks' films were not especially fun but tended to be sacchariney sweet. Instead, this Willie film manages to avoid these pitfalls and simply entertain.

Average effort at best

[llltdesq · 5/10 · 11 December 2015]

This is a short in the Willie Whopper series produced by Iwerks studio. There will be spoilers ahead:

For some reason, I wasn't overly impressed by this cartoon, though I am a bit curious as to whether or not Chuck Jones or Michael Maltese saw this one at any point before doing Bunny Hugged, which is a much superior wrestling cartoon.

Willie is shining the shoes of a large man reading a paper and it may well be obvious to everyone but Willie who this will eventually turn out to be, particularly after Willie decides to tell one of his "whoppers".

Willie tells all about the night he beat the champ. It starts out with Willie being unable to even hold his own against a trainer! Willie gets roughed up getting a friendly rub down and then takes a shower. There are some stereotype gags in this short.

We see the march into the ring, with Mary in the crowd. There, the ref is also the announcer and he tears sheets off a roll of toilet paper as he introduces the two. The time keeper has an odd way to ring the bell and the match begins.

There's a fair amount of reused footage in here, mainly the re-use of one gag several times where a swarthy fan of Willie's exhorts him to "Geeve eat to heam, Willie!" in a thick Mexican accent. Willie actually gets the worst of it in the match starting out, until he and Mary cheat. Willie covers himself in cold cream to make himself too slippery and then proceeds to tire the champ into submission.

The ending of the short is rather obvious and not terribly funny or novel. Still the short looks reasonably nice and it and the other shorts in the series are now available on a Blu-Ray/ DVD combo released by Thunderbean, which is very nice and well worth getting.

Willie Whopper goes wrestling

[TheLittleSongbird · 7/10 · 8 May 2018]

Ub Iwerks's Willie Whopper series of cartoons was short-lived, only lasting a year from 1933 to 1934. On the most part the Willie Whopper cartoons are not great or cartoon/animated masterpieces and it is sort of understandable as to why Willie didn't make it bigger. However they are far from terrible ones either and do amuse and charm.

1934's 'Rasslin Round' is not quite one of the best Willie Whopper cartoons. It's still very entertaining though and to me it is one of the better ones. And this is coming from somebody who has only just gotten acquainted with the series as a huge animation fan. Just don't expect a masterpiece or too much.

'Rasslin Round' may be on the formulaic side with conflict that is somewhat predictable, it is not hard to figure out at all how it all ends.

Willie himself is slightly bland and a fairly limited character, while still being likeable. There is one gag and line used more than once and it becomes repetitive and less funny.

However, there is a lot of nice background work, smooth drawing, lively black and white (although it was originally meant to be in colour) and inventive little things. The music is energetic and characterful with appealing orchestration. The cartoon goes at a lively pace, has an appealing charm and the tale is wonderfully outlandish.

There are a lot of very amusing and sweet little laughs which makes it entertaining. Although slightly bland, Willie avoids being annoying and he avoids being sickly sweet as well, fairly likeable. The supporting characters are a lively bunch and 'Rasslin Round' successfully brings out the excitement and danger of wrestling.

Overall, there are better wrestling-themed cartoons but this is pretty good. 7/10 Bethany Cox

'Geeve eat to heem, Willie!'

[ccthemovieman-1 · 8/10 · 12 May 2008]

This wasn't quite as wild as the normal boxing cartoon of the day but still was very entertaining, with a couple of wrestling scenes that made me laugh out loud. Poor Willie was literally dribbled around the ring like a basketball in one funny scene. The others are almost you-have-to-see-it-to-believe-it status....all of which make this fun to watch.

Willie is a shoe-shine boy in this story, and he's trying to impress a customer so he tells him this "whopper." This is the story of Willie's championship wrestling match between he and "The Masked Marvel." The latter is some huge, hair, Hulk-like beast.....but you know who prevails in the end (thanks to his girl friend and a jar of cold cream - don't ask.)

Along the way, we got strange occurrence in which this grubby-looking weird guy sprawled out in the stands keeps yelling "Geeve eat to heem, Willie!!!" Actually, it's pretty funny and occurs four different times in the bout.