A Cartoonist's Nightmare: Ink-Stained Chaos

Is it worth a watch?

Honestly, if you like the frantic, rubber-hose era of animation where everything is constantly squashing and stretching, you’ll probably get a kick out of this. It's weirdly dark. If you prefer your cartoons to have a coherent sense of space or logic, maybe skip it. It’s definitely not for anyone who hates that 1930s chaotic energy.

The whole premise is basically a fever dream. A cartoonist just wants to draw, but his own villains are fed up with the script. It’s meta, I guess? Though I doubt they were trying to be smart about it. They just wanted to see stuff break.

Beans the Cat is the hero here, which is funny because he’s usually just kind of a background nuisance in these things. Seeing him actually step up and try to tackle these ink monsters feels like watching a mascot try to hold back a riot. He looks stressed out. Like, genuinely, he’s having a bad day.

Oddly specific observations

• The way the villains move is genuinely unnerving, like they’re glitching through the paper.
• I swear the background music gets faster every time the cartoonist starts sweating. It’s almost stressful to listen to.
• The ink stains look like they have actual weight to them, which is a cool touch for the era.
• There’s a moment where a drawing just refuses to follow the lines. That was actually a bit spooky.

It’s not as polished as the stuff you’d see from the big studios, but it has that raw, hand-drawn grime that’s missing from modern digital work. Sometimes the lines skip. Sometimes the frames stutter. I like that, actually. It feels like the film itself is struggling to keep the chaos contained.

I found myself thinking about The Challenge of Chance while watching this, mainly because both films feel like they’re testing how much weirdness an audience can handle before they just tune out. It’s not quite as grounded as Kriminalreporter Holm, but then again, nobody is expecting realism from a cat fighting a sketch.

The ending is a bit abrupt. It just stops. No real resolution, just the dust settling and a sigh of relief. It’s a strange little artifact. If you've got ten minutes and want to see some vintage madness, give it a go. Just don't expect it to make much sense. 🖋️🐱