Bottles: A bizarre trip through a drugstore

Is it worth your time?

If you like old-school, rubber-hose animation where the logic is thin but the imagination is cranked up to eleven, yes. If you need a plot that doesn't feel like a hallucination, stay away. This one is for the folks who enjoy the weird energy found in Heebee Jeebees.

It starts with a storm outside a drugstore. Classic setup. The guy behind the counter is just trying to do his job, but he mixes a potion and hits the hay. That is when the trouble starts.

The skull-and-crossbones on a bottle wakes up. It drips this stuff on the druggist, and suddenly he is the size of a bug. The baby bottles start singing in three-part harmony. It is genuinely creepy but also kind of catchy?

I cannot stop thinking about the perfume atomizer being played like bagpipes. Who comes up with this stuff? It is absolute madness.

The chaotic shelves

Everything in the store joins in. Listerine, smelling salts, and India ink just start doing their own thing. There is a bit with some Cobra toothpaste that felt like it belonged in a completely different movie.

The Dutch boy and girl skating on a mirror made of talcum powder is a nice touch. It is small, weird details like that which make me appreciate the craft. It feels like the animators were just throwing every idea they had at the wall.

The druggist playing a pipe like a tuba is peak cartoon physics. He gets absolutely wrecked by the end of the short, going through a distilling machine and all that. It is a bit violent, honestly.

Then he wakes up. Of course he does.

It is not as heartwarming as Betty Boop and Grampy, but it has a frantic energy that is hard to ignore. It is messy, loud, and weirdly hypnotic. Sometimes that is exactly what you need.