F Gwynplaine MacIntyre
With a title like 'Hula Hula Land', I was afraid that this Heckle and Jeckle cartoon would contain racial stereotypes of exotic "natives". Fortunately, that isn't the case. 'Hula Hula Land' contains nothing but wholesome hilarious violence ... nothing remotely objectionable.The two magpies are hot-dog salesmen this time, and they set up their keester on a tropical beach. They charge ten cents for a hot dog; I wonder if that was a fair price in 1949, when this cartoon was made. Jeckle puts on a grass skirt and dances an alleged hula (so he's a female impersonator, then) while Heckle goes into his spiel. The weenies come alive and start moving about; I found this gag distressing when Felix the Cat did it in 'April Maze' (1930) and it's only slightly less distressing here.The Heckle & Jeckle toons were extremely variable, not only in their humour quotient but also in their production values. 'Hula Hula Land' is one of the shoddier ones, and looks it. One animation sequence here -- the magpies' exit from a bath-house, dressed in swimming cozzies -- was recycled from 'The Intruders' (1947), a much funnier and more elaborate toon in their series.The feathered chums soon attract the attention of that bulldog constable (did he ever have a name?) and Dimwit, the dumb hound. We get a variation on a gag the Marx Brothers used in their film 'Go West': Heckle sells Dimwit a frankfurter with a string attached, so that he can snatch it back repeatedly. From here, we're into standard-issue Terrytoons violence, unfortunately more generic and less imaginative than usual ... until the final gag.SPOILER NOW. The bulldog bombs the birds with an explosive so powerful, it raises a mushroom cloud! I guess this was meant to be a topical tropical reference to the atomic-bomb tests which Uncle Sam was conducting on tropical atolls at this time. Fortunately, the fade-out shows that our magpie friends are still alive and well. 'Hula Hula Land' is an amusing entry in their series, but no better than that. My rating: 6 out of 10.
