Little Annie Rooney (1931) User Reviews

What's Betty Boop Doing in the Sing-Along Sequence?

[boblipton · 6/10 · 27 April 2014]

The Fleischers had a fondness for making Screen Songs out of sentimental Irish songs about New York. The best known survivor is "Sidealks of New York" and they all celebrated the common man as seen in Gotham. The genre quickly grew stale yet remained popular because the audience kept buying it. "Little Annie Rooney" was near the end of the popular phase and doesn't have much to recommend itself other than it was an excuse to put together a Screen Song.

What's great about this one is the wonderful three-dimensional opening and interval just before the song. The Fleischers made a number of technological advancements in cartooning, including patents on rotoscoping, but they also adapted some and made occasional use of a cyclorama to give an immense background and permit, effectively, early multi-planing effects. The best known example is probably 1935's DANCING ON THE MOON, but it's eye-popping here.

They don't make 'em like they used to...thank God!

[planktonrules · 3/10 · 9 November 2012]

While I thoroughly hated "Little Annie Rooney" and any cartoon like it, I at least gave it a three because it did feature some amazing animation for 1931. The film had an amazing 3-D look, as the camera moved about in a manner I've never seen in other films--even other Fleischer Brothers films. It looked as if the camera was in a real cartoon world. Sadly, however, despite eye-popping visuals, the rest of the cartoon is just dreadful--the sort of cartoon that is extremely tedious and dated. There really isn't much plot--just LOTS of cute characters and TONS of singing. The Fleischers made quite a few singing cartoons in the 1930s--ones with the bouncing ball that encouraged the audience to sing along with the lyrics. I have no idea if folks ever did sing along with these crappy cartoons in the theaters--but if they had, then the films would have been 1000 times worse!! Saccharine and bland--this film is incredibly dated and tedious.

Watch this for the animation, not the singalong

[llltdesq · 8/10 · 3 May 2015]

This is a short in the Screen Song series produced by Fleischer. There will be spoilers ahead:

This short centers around the song Little Annie Rooney. The title character is seen going someplace-home, a friend's house, wherever. The animation in this is amazing, by the way. The Fleischers did some incredible work with backgrounds and the like, often on a par visually with Disney. Annie climbing the steps is remarkable for the visuals.

Annie opens the door and is surprised by her friends on her birthday. She and her boyfriend Joe go to the couch and begin singing "Little Annie Rooney" to each other, where they visual life after marriage. Annie sees Joe's daydream of him walking down the street while she's keeping house in hers and she slaps him.

Next scene, one little friend puts candles on the cake, stopping at nine. At that point, the rest of the candles decide to all jump on the cake. Joe counts the candles and assumes Annie is 99 and bids her "So long, Grandma!" while exiting quickly. There's a nice bit with his shoes here. Joe gets what he deserves and Annie leads into the singalong, which is mercifully short, because the song hasn't aged well. There's a short animated bit after the singalong, where Annie and Joe make up and get married. There's a brief sort of cameo by Betty Boop and Annie's voice sounds like Betty, but she isn't really part of this.

This short deserves to be more widely known. Recommended.

Little Annie Rooney

[Michael_Elliott · 28 September 2017]

Little Annie Rooney (1931)

*** (out of 4)

The Fleischer Studio produced a number of these animated short films where the "bouncing ball" would have audience members singing together. The story centers on the title character going to someone house where there's other people, a cake and some trouble to get into. If you're familiar with these Fleischer shorts then you already know that the majority of this series followed the same format. We get a brief animated sequence and then cut to the bouncing ball doing a song. I'm sure these were very popular back in the day and they remain entertaining today thanks in large part to the animation. The animation is what makes this film worth watching as it's quite good and there are also some memorable characters.