Why Jungle Bungles is still a weirdly fun watch

The Cat, The Camera, and The Chaos

Is this worth watching today? Honestly, yes, but mostly if you have about six minutes and a weird appreciation for how people used to draw cats before they knew how cats actually moved.

If you're looking for a deep story, you're gonna hate this. It's just a bunch of stuff happening because Otto Messmer felt like drawing it.

But if you like seeing the rules of reality get thrown out the window for the sake of a gag, it's a little gem. 🐱

It starts with Felix just wandering into the jungle to take some photos. Why? Who knows. He’s got this box camera that looks like it’s made of cardboard and hope.

The way Felix walks is just... well it's iconic for a reason I guess. That hunched over, hands-behind-the-back stride is still the coolest thing in animation history.

The first thing he runs into is a lion that looks like it hasn't slept since 1925. The lion doesn't even look scary, it just looks annoyed that Felix is there with a tripod.

There is this great moment where Felix’s tail turns into a literal question mark because he’s confused. It’s such a simple visual trick but it works better than any dialogue could.

I noticed the background trees keep looping every few seconds. It’s kind of hypnotic, almost like the weird repetition you see in The Eskimo, though obviously way less chilly.

The physics in this thing are just broken. At one point, Felix uses his own tail as a hook to climb up something, and then he just puts it back on like it's no big deal.

I feel like modern animators are too scared to let characters just fall apart and come back together like this. It’s got that high-energy vibe you get in Buffalo e Bill where things just happen because they can.

The camera Felix is carrying eventually gets eaten by a hippo, or maybe it was a rhino? The drawing is a bit smudgey so it’s hard to tell.

Anyway, the animal just swallows it whole. Instead of dying, the animal just starts flashing like a strobe light because the camera is going off inside its stomach. 📸

It’s a really stupid joke, but I laughed out loud because it’s so literal. It reminds me of the pacing in Poker Faces, where the humor just keeps hitting you before you can think about it.

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of Jungle Bungles (1928) through its definitive frames.

There’s a segment with some monkeys that is... well, it’s a bit uncomfortable if you think about the era it was made in. You can prolly guess what I mean without me explaining it.

If you can ignore the dated tropes of the late 20s, the pure imagination of the animation is still there. Messmer had this way of making everything feel alive, even the rocks and the grass.

It’s not as grand as something like The Isle of Lost Ships, but it doesn't need to be. It’s just a cat being a jerk to wildlife for six minutes.

I love how the animals don't really have bones. They just stretch and squish like they're made of old chewing gum.

There is a scene where a snake tries to eat Felix and he just turns into a ball and rolls away. It’s so fast you almost miss it if you blink.

The ending is super abrupt. Like, the cartoon just decides it’s done and the screen goes black.

I wish more movies had the guts to just stop when the main joke is finished. We don't need a twenty-minute epilogue where everyone learns a lesson.

Felix doesn't learn a lesson. He just survives, which is honestly more relatable.

It’s got that same raw, unpolished feeling you find in Forbidden Paths, where you can almost see the people behind the scenes just making it up as they go.

The film doesn't look "great" by modern standards, obviously. It’s grainy and the lines wobble like crazy.

But that wobble is where the soul is. You can feel the pen strokes on the cells.

It’s way more interesting to watch than a perfectly rendered CGI cat that looks too real to be funny. Realism is the enemy of comedy in cartoons, and this movie proves it.

If you see this on a list of old shorts, don't skip it. It’s a nice little palette cleanser between longer, more serious movies.

Just don't expect a masterpiece. It's just a bungled trip to the jungle, and that's perfectly fine with me.