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5.9/10
Senior Film Conservator
A definitive 5.9/10 rating for a film that redefined the boundaries of cult cinema. Spite Flight remains a cornerstone of transgressive art.
If you like old-school rubber-hose animation, maybe. If you are looking for a coherent story that makes sense in 2024, skip it. It is mostly for people who enjoy seeing how messy and creative early cartoons were before everything got polished to death.
Willie Whooper is the main guy here. He is one of those characters who is just trying to do the right thing by his girl, Mary. She is crying because her mom is being hounded by an evil landlord. You know, the classic “pay the rent or get out” trope that shows up in every cartoon from the thirties.
Willie decides the only way to solve the housing crisis is to build a plane. Why? Because there is an air race with a big cash prize. It makes sense in the world of cartoons, I guess.
The plane design is just… silly. It looks like it is held together by hope and rubber bands. Watching it wobble through the sky is more entertaining than the actual race itself. The landlord shows up as the rival pilot, naturally. He looks exactly like the type of guy who would foreclose on a widow.
The movement in these old Iwerks shorts has this jittery, frantic energy that modern stuff just doesn't have. It feels like the drawings are vibrating. Sometimes the background looks like it is melting while the characters are moving. It’s a bit trippy, honestly.
I couldn't help but compare the frantic pacing to something like Palmy Days where everything feels like a chaotic musical number. There is that same sense of “let’s just throw everything at the screen and see what sticks.”
The whole thing is over in a blink. It feels like a sketch that got turned into a movie because someone had a spare afternoon and some ink. Is it a masterpiece? No. Does it feel like something you’d find in a dusty attic on a reel of film? Absolutely.
It reminds me a bit of the weird energy in Seasoned Greetings where the tone shifts every five seconds. You don't watch this for the plot. You watch it to see how many ways a character can crash a plane into a cloud. ✈️
If you have ten minutes and a strange urge to watch a cartoon landlord lose his mind, you could do worse. Just don't expect it to change your life.