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7.6/10
Senior Film Conservator
A definitive 7.6/10 rating for a film that redefined the boundaries of cult cinema. Hot and Cold remains a cornerstone of transgressive art.
If you like old-school, slightly chaotic animation from the 30s, sure. It’s six minutes of your life. If you hate rubbery character designs or just prefer your cartoons with actual dialogue instead of jazz-fueled pantomime, maybe skip this one. ❄️
Hot and Cold is exactly the kind of manic, nonsense energy that defined early Walter Lantz stuff. Pooch the Pup is just floating around the igloos, being a hobo, as one does.
Then things go sideways. A girl dog gets turned into a literal ice cube. It’s not even a graceful freeze; she just looks like she’s stuck inside a block of Jell-O.
Pooch tries to help, which is cute but entirely ineffective. He brings in Old King Cold to thaw things out, which is a classic cartoon move. You know, just summon a mythological ruler to fix the central heating.
The weather shifts because a polar bear is feeling vengeful. It makes about as much sense as the plot of The Grub Stake, though with significantly more icicles.
It reminds me a bit of the frantic pacing in Felix Finds Out, where things happen just because the animator felt like drawing them. There’s no real rhyme or reason to the physics here. Things freeze, things melt, things get angry, and then it’s over.
The sound design is mostly just squeaky noises and rapid-fire music. It’s exhausting if you’re actually paying attention. But if you’re just looking for that specific 1933 vibe? It hits the spot. 🧊
There’s a weird moment where the polar bear looks directly at the camera. It’s genuinely kind of unsettling. Don't trust him.
It’s not high art. It’s not even middle art. It’s just a cartoon where a dog tries to fix a frozen situation and mostly just makes a mess of the ecosystem. 🤷♂️