The Athlete (1932) is a weird little relic

Is this worth your time?

If you have a soft spot for pre-Code animation and don’t mind the occasional headache from the frantic pace, sure. It’s a curiosity. If you need a coherent story or characters that make sense, you will probably hate it. It’s just noise and limbs flying everywhere.

There’s this one moment where the character tries to run a race, and his legs turn into actual wheels. It’s such a lazy gag, yet I couldn't stop looking at it. Why wheels? Did he lose his kneecaps? The animation logic just decides to quit halfway through.

It reminds me a bit of the chaos found in What! No Spinach?, where the gags come so fast you don't even have time to blink. Except here, the humor feels even more desperate. Like the animators were just throwing ink at the screen to see what stuck.

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of The Athlete (1932) through its definitive frames.

The weirdness of it all

The background art is surprisingly sharp for 1932. You can tell they put more effort into the trees and the stadium than into the actual plot. Everything is just… there. The character moves, he falls down, he wins, he loses. There is zero stakes.

Watching this, I kept thinking about how different the pacing is compared to modern stuff. It’s like a sugar rush. You don't watch this to be entertained; you watch it to see how they drew things before computers did the heavy lifting. It’s imperfect, kind of messy, and occasionally makes you squint at the screen.

• The sound effects are painfully loud.
• The character design is... questionable.
• I still don't know why he wanted to be an athlete in the first place.

It’s not a masterpiece, but it’s a time capsule. If you're bored on a Tuesday, it beats staring at the wall. Just don't go looking for depth. You won't find it here. The vibe is basically: "Let's make a guy run fast and fall over." Mission accomplished, I guess? 🏃‍♂️💨