Buddy's Garage (1934) review - A weird, sweaty little cartoon chase

If you have eight minutes to spare and love dusty, weird old cartoons where physics don't exist, Buddy's Garage is a fun little trip. Skip it if you need things like "plot logic" or characters who don't look like bootleg Mickey Mouse knockoffs. 🚗

It starts simple enough. Buddy and Cookie are just trying to eat some lunch at a messy auto shop, which honestly looks like a major safety hazard.

Then some sketchy guy rolls up and just... snatches Cookie. It is incredibly sudden, like the writer Tom Armstrong realized he only had five minutes left on his break to finish the script.

The car chase is where things get truly bizarre. Buddy's car basically becomes a living thing, stretching and bending in ways that make your own knees hurt just watching it.

I swear there is a sound effect of a dog barking when the car engine sputters. Why a dog? Nobody knows, and the movie surely isn't telling us. 🐶

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of Buddy's Garage (1934) through its definitive frames.

It reminds me of the chaotic energy in Fly Hi, where everything just feels slightly unhinged. Or maybe a bit of the sheer stubbornness you see in The Aggravatin' Kid, but with more grease and exhaust fumes.

Billy Bletcher does some voice work here, and his deep voice always makes me laugh. He could say "pass the salt" and it would sound like a villainous threat.

There is this one shot where Buddy is steering with his feet while holding a sandwich. That is the kind of multitasking we need more of in modern cinema.

The animators must of been running out of paper because the background keeps repeating every three seconds. You see the same cactus like fifteen times.

The ending is so abrupt. One second they are crashing, the next it is over and you are left staring at a black screen wondering what just happened.

It is not a masterpiece, but it has that weird 1930s grime that modern CGI stuff can never replicate. Worth a quick watch if you are bored. 🥪