Scrappy’s Party is a weird time capsule of celebrity cameos

Is this thing worth your time?

If you have any interest in animation history or just want to see how weirdly political cartoons used to get, sure. You’ll probably hate it if you need a coherent story or if you get easily annoyed by 1930s-style slapstick. It’s not a narrative masterpiece. It’s just a weird, chaotic party.

Honestly, watching Scrappy’s Party feels a bit like digging through an old attic and finding a sketchbook that shouldn't exist. The sheer density of caricatures is dizzying. You’ve got Laurel & Hardy showing up next to Mussolini, which is a sentence I never thought I’d write.

The pacing is… well, it’s frantic. It doesn’t have the grace of The Hunchback of Notre Dame or the sweetness of You Made Me Love You. It just moves from one celebrity gag to the next. It’s a bit exhausting, to be honest. 😅

I found myself pausing just to identify who was standing in the background. Seeing Ghandi and Babe Ruth at the same party? It’s surreal. It feels like the animators were just daring themselves to include the most mismatched people they could think of. The bit with Al Capone being stuck in prison while everyone else dances is a nice touch of reality, I guess.

It’s definitely not as smooth as Platinum Blonde, but it has this raw, unpolished energy. You can tell they were having fun drawing these exaggerated faces. Some of them are spot on. Others look like they were drawn from a vague memory of a newspaper clipping.

• Jimmy Durante’s nose is doing a lot of heavy lifting here.
• The dance sequences are surprisingly bouncy.
• Wait, is that really George Bernard Shaw just chilling in the corner?

It’s a strange little relic. It doesn't try to be anything profound or deep. It just wants to be a party. Sometimes that’s enough. Other times, you just wonder why Mussolini is dancing with a cartoon dog. 🤷‍♂️