The Air Race: Just another cartoon flight of fancy

Is this worth a watch?

Honestly, only if you have seven minutes to kill and a soft spot for 1930s animation. If you aren't into rubber-hose movement or characters that turn into airplanes, you’ll probably find this pretty forgettable. But for fans of Ub Iwerks, it’s a neat little time capsule.

Willie is essentially the guy at the bar who won't stop talking about his high school football days. Except, here, he’s a pilot. The whole premise is just a vessel for gags. It doesn't care much about narrative stakes, which is actually kind of refreshing in a weird way. ✈️

The pacing is absolutely manic. It’s like the animators were on a sugar rush. One second he’s on the ground, the next he’s mid-air, and everything is morphing into something else. It feels a lot less coherent than something like Clancy at the Bat, but it’s got that frantic energy that makes these old shorts feel alive.

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of The Air Race (1933) through its definitive frames.

Oddly specific details:

• The way the propeller on his plane just kind of gives up and flops over? Relatable.
• The crowd scenes are just blobs of ink moving in patterns, which is hilarious if you stare at them too long.
• There is a moment where the plane's shadow looks more real than the plane itself.

It’s not trying to be Civilization. It’s just trying to make you chuckle while some ink-blot character gets his feathers ruffled. The sound effects feel like they were recorded in a bathroom, but that’s half the charm, right? 🔊

I found myself zoning out during the mid-section. It gets a bit repetitive with the 'near-miss' tropes. You know the ones—where the pilot almost hits a mountain and pulls up at the last second. We get it. You're a good pilot.

Compared to the weirdness of Le Theatre du hula hula, this feels fairly standard. It’s a safe bet for a rainy afternoon. Just don't go looking for deep character development or a plot that actually makes sense. It’s all about the motion.

Sometimes the animation gets *so* loose that you lose track of where Willie’s limbs are. It’s messy. It’s loud. It’s totally fine.