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Monday, April 4, 2016

Short Subject: Bath Day (1946)



Figaro gets a bath and hates it.



Well the cat hating taking a bath is a common enough trope so I’m glad it only takes up the first bit of the short.  The rest of it is Figaro getting harassed by an alley cat and it’s gang for his bow that Minnie puts on him and getting the last laugh when a pile of garbage falls on the leader when he takes Figaro behind the fence and the other cats think Figaro beat him up, until Minnie says she is going to give Figaro another bath. 

I love Figaro’s expressions and the image he imagines of himself in the mirror while wearing the bow, and the other cats as well.  The only real downside for me is that someone in cleanup was asleep at the switch because of the colour errors here.  We have one scene where Figaro’s bow disappears and then reappears, but more glaring is that one of his paws wasn’t painted white leading to the entire end of the cartoon showing him with only three white paws where previously there had been four.  Sure things like this do happen, because no one ie perfect, but I’ve never seen it go for four different scenes like this, how did no one catch this mistake?

Oh, well despite ink and paint screw ups I still really liked this short.  I like seeing Figaro in the underdog role as opposed a troublemaker.  I like seeing the alley cat design in a larger role than simply a one off character as they are in other shorts like ‘The New Neighbor’.  Finally I like that ‘cat hating bat’ trope is used to further the plot of the short rather than just being the entirety of it, with Minnie chasing Figaro around while wacky hijinks ensue as it could have been.      

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