Snow Time is a weird, drunk, rubbery fever dream

Is it worth a watch?

If you have seven minutes and want to feel like you’ve stepped into a hallucination, then yes. It is definitely worth it.

People who love pre-Code weirdness will get a kick out of this. If you only like high-quality Disney stuff, you will probably hate how cheap and wobbly it looks. ⛄

It’s a Van Beuren short, which usually means the animation feels like it was drawn by someone who hadn't slept in three days. The physics make no sense at all.

The whole thing starts with animals just doing winter stuff. But everything is bouncing. Even the trees are dancing, which is kind of creepy if you stare at them for too long.

There is this goat at the beginning that skids across the ice. Its legs move in circles like it’s a bicycle, not a living creature.

I noticed the snow looks less like powder and more like giant, white blobs of mashed potatoes. It doesn't look cold at all.

Then we get to the hot dog stand. This is where it gets really strange. 🌭

The hot dogs are alive. They wiggle on the grill like they are trying to escape, but then they just accept their fate and jump into the buns.

A dog is the one selling them. I don't want to think about the implications of a dog selling meat to other animals.

The cartoon doesn't really have a plot. It’s just one weird event after another, like a series of GIFs stitched together by a madman.

The music is that loud, brassy jazz that never stops. It’s catchy but it also makes the whole experience feel very frantic.

One of the characters—a cat, I think?—has arms that grow and shrink depending on what he's doing. The consistency is just zero.

It reminds me of the chaotic energy in The Breath of a Nation. There's this sense that anything can happen because nobody is checking the rules.

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of Snow Time (1930) through its definitive frames.

The highlight is definitely the drinking. You wouldn't see this in a cartoon today, that's for sure. 🍺

A bird finds a bottle and just goes for it. Suddenly, the whole screen starts tilting and the animation gets even blurrier to show the bird is wasted.

It’s actually a pretty good visual for being drunk. The bird tries to fly and just falls out of the sky like a rock.

I like how the background characters don't even care. They just keep skating and bouncing in the back.

There's a moment where a moose slides into the frame and does a little dance. He doesn't have a reason to be there. He just is.

The ice skating scenes have no friction. Characters just slide around like they are on air, which makes the whole thing feel even more like a dream.

I noticed a mistake in one frame where a character's hat just teleports from his head to the ground. They definitely didn't have time for retakes back then.

It’s much more chaotic than something like Snowbound. That movie feels like it has a plan, while this feels like a riot.

The ending isn't really an ending. It just sort of... stops? The music hits a final note and the screen fades out while everyone is still scrambling around.

I think I prefer this to the polished stuff. It feels like you can see the actual pen strokes of the tired animators.

It’s not a "good" movie in the traditional sense, but it’s a fascinating relic. 🕰️

Go watch it if you want to see a bunch of animals lose their minds in the snow. Just don't expect it to make any sense.

It’s loud, it’s messy, and it’s probably a little bit insane. My kind of cartoon.