Along Flirtation Walk (1935) User Reviews

Quaintly amusing

[utgard14 · 6/10 · 4 August 2016]

Merrie Melodies short, directed by Friz Freleng, about the students at a bird college. We see them dancing, singing, and having fun the night before a big game. Then we see the game itself, which looks like it will be football but turns out to be egg-laying. Funny and mildly gross. The animation is decent but nothing special, even for its time. The music is upbeat. It's all light and fluffy and silly. Many viewers will find it corny I'm sure. There's something to be said for the idea of the birds playing a game that involves egg-laying but beyond that there isn't a lot to work with here. Harmless enough but doubtful anyone will be impressed by it.

A game that could have been bigger

[TheLittleSongbird · 6/10 · 5 June 2018]

Love animation, it was a big part of my life as a child, particularly Disney, Looney Tunes and Tom and Jerry, and still love it whether it's film, television or cartoons. Actually appreciate it even more through young adults eyes, due to having more knowledge of it, various animation styles, studios, directors and how it all works.

'Along Flirtation Walk' is not one of Friz Freleng's, a director who did many great cartoons and a director held in high admiration by me, best, not being one of his funniest, wittiest or freshest. For relatively early Freleng, 'Along Flirtation Walk' is decent though he would do much better later. It is never what one would call properly hilarious (but is never unfunny), Freleng's later efforts show more evenness and confidence in directing and the story.

It is quite thin in terms of story and the structure is basically an excuse to string the gags along. The gags in the first half lacked a bit in wit and did lack invention and sometimes energy even. While most of the characters are fun enough, others are not particularly interesting.

However, many of the characters are fun, even if there is no discernible lead.

The cartoon has a lot of very amusing moments in the second half, some variety and there is a good deal of liveliness. The fun and danger of the game can be well captured, even if it could have come more consistently.

Animation is very good, it's fluid in movement, crisp in shading, vibrant and very meticulous in detail. The music is lovely on the ears, lushly orchestrated, full of lively energy and characterful in rhythm, not only adding to the action but also enhancing it.

Conflict is good fun.

In conclusion, decent. 6/10 Bethany Cox

A close examination of this fowl game . . .

[oscaralbert · 6/10 · 13 February 2017]

. . . shows storm clouds portending on the (then far) horizon, as seen by that Warner Bros.' team of psychic prognosticators, that Animated Shorts Seers division, sometimes known collectively as the Looney Tuners. Like Cassandra of the Ancient Greeks, these stalwart champions of chiming in about upcoming Calamites, Catastrophes, Cataclysms, and Apocalypti could draw up something seemingly simple, such as an egg-laying contest between two intercollegiate teams of chickens in ALONG FLIRTATION WALK, which would turn out to become an increasing important clarion klaxon call to arms as the decades rolled by. Notice that the "Rhode Island Reds" team cheats here during halftime when their coach force-feeds them pool balls (which they proceed to "lay" unaltered during the third quarter of this tussle). Anyone who's glanced at a sports page in this past decade will immediately recognize this corrupt coach as the former Soviet Union's Cheater-in-Chief, the Red Commie KGB Strongman Vlad "The Mad Russian" Putin. The home squad soon resorts to similar tactics, under the guidance of Putin's puppet, White House Resident Rump. Though Rump's Plymouth Rock Squad "triumphs" with the Forced Birthing of the twin evils of Rape and Incest in the final seconds, 101-100, Putin still has the last laugh here, as his Reds have reduced America to the lowest common denominator with Russia: two societies in which it's always Open Season on the Fair Sex, where the Oligarchical Billionaires can grab all the "pies" (or, in their own lingo, think the plural of a different "P-word" sharing the last four letters of "fussy"), where Medicaid and Planned Parenthood have been outlawed, where Rape is legal and birth control banned, and in which most babies are the issue of rapists and incestuous relatives. When this sorry state of affairs is fully realized, DO NOT COMPLAIN that you weren't warned, because Warner Bros. could not sound a much clearer alarm than their animators provided ALONG FLIRTATION WALK.

performance-enhancing drugs: the original version

[lee_eisenberg · 7/10 · 2 August 2007]

With all the talk that we often hear about athletes using performance-enhancing drugs to win competitions, Friz Freleng's "Along Flirtation Walk" becomes all the more interesting. It starts out with a dance in Plymouth Rock College - which reminded me just a little of the dance in "The Way We Were" - a college for chickens. The next day, there's the big game against the Rhode Island Reds. It looks like it's going to be football, but it turns out that they're laying eggs. That's when the cheating starts, as the Reds ingest billiard bills so that they keep laying. More surprises lie ahead.

I know, the people making this cartoon probably never intended for anyone to interpret anything about athletes taking drugs. It's just that I always like to associate the portrayals with things about which I hear in the news. If that makes me a weirdo, then so be it.

All in all, an OK cartoon.