The Goal Rush: A Frog Playing Football, For Some Reason

Is it worth your time?

If you have a soft spot for the rubber-hose style of animation from the early 30s, then absolutely. It is a quick watch. You get about seven minutes of pure, unadulterated nonsense. If you are the type who needs a plot that makes sense, or if you get stressed out by cartoon characters getting absolutely pulverized, maybe skip this one. It’s definitely not for the realism crowd.

Flip the Frog is just a guy trying to exist, but in The Goal Rush, existence means getting dragged into a college football game. The physics in this thing are completely optional. Characters stretch like taffy, and bones seem to be made of nothing but soft clay.

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

I noticed that the background characters have this weird, repetitive quality. It reminded me a bit of the frantic energy in Fly Hi, where everything is moving just for the sake of it. The animators clearly weren't trying to win an architecture award with the stadium drawings.

The Highlights (or Lowlights)

• The sound effects are incredibly crunchy. Every tackle sounds like a bag of wet laundry hitting a brick wall.
• There is a moment where a player gets flattened into a pancake and just… stays that way for a second? It’s genuinely funny.
• The referee is essentially a prop for slapstick. I think he gets hit in the face at least four times.

The whole thing feels a little bit like the chaotic energy found in Little Robinson Corkscrew. It’s just pure, kinetic joy with zero moral grounding. You don't watch this for the story. You watch it to see how many ways a frog can get squashed without dying.

Honestly, the ending is a bit abrupt. It just stops. It feels like the animators either ran out of film or just got bored and decided to call it a day. I don’t mind it. Sometimes a short cartoon doesn’t need a big finale. It just needs to be weird enough to keep you looking at the screen. 🐸🏈