Little Ol' Bosko and the Cannibals (1937) User Reviews (6)

Well made but likely to offend.

[planktonrules · 7/10 · 13 May 2021]

Originally, Bosko was the first cartoon character from Looney Tunes. However, when producers Hugh Harmon and Rudolf Ising went to MGM for more money, they also retained rights to this generally racially ambiguous character. Oddly, after two films with MGM, the pair decided to remake Bosko and turn him into a black kid....and one whose look would probably cause many politically correct folks to have coronaries! However, he is more realistic looking than he had looked.

In "Little Ol' Bosko and the Cannibals", Bosco is asked by 'Mammy' to take a bag of cookies to grandma. But on the way, his imagination runs wild...and has some adventures with a gigantic frog and his cannibal froggy buddies. By the way, like in an early Bosko effort from MGM, two of the frogs clearly are modeled after Bill 'Bojangles' Robinson and 'Fats' Waller.

So is it any good? Well, it's pretty entertaining and the cannibal frogs' singing is much less saccharine than most of the singing in the Bosko cartoons. Also, Buckwheat Thomas (from the Our Gang shorts) is kind of cute voicing Bosko...which he did only on two occasions. It's actually rather cute and enjoyable....but due to changing attitudes and a strong push for political correctness, I can't see them ever showing this on television!

Little ol' Bosko and the Cannibals is highly entertaining musical cartoon short

[tavm · 9/10 · 9 June 2007]

As in a previous cartoon I reviewed, Little ol' Bosko in Bagdad, Bosko (who I'll remind you here is not the monkey-looking character from Warner Bros. but a more realistic-looking little black boy) is on his way to give a bag of cookies for Grandma when he gets stopped by a frog that sounds like Louis Armstrong. In this version, he and other frog caricatures of famous African-American musicians like Fats Waller, Cab Calloway, and Bill "Bojangles" Robinson are portrayed as cannibals. At least this time we get spared Stepin Fetchit. Also like Little ol' Bosko in Bagdad, there's plenty of singing and dancing about Louis wanting cookies/Bosko refusing to give them. Having now seen two versions of basically the same number in two different cartoons, I wonder if someone at Disney watched these and used it as inspiration for the "I Wanna Be Like You" number with Louis Prima, Mogli, and Phil Harris in The Jungle Book. Anyway, very entertaining musical short with hardly any stereotypes (not the offensive kind, anyway). Highly recommended for MGM cartoon buffs curious about the output before Tom and Jerry and Tex Avery came along...

Bosko is one cool kid...

[JamesJameson · 10/10 · 15 November 2007]

I like Bosko... He is a little boy, who has a great imagination, and is also very brave... It's absurd to characterize this cartoon as being racist.. First of all there were only two blacks in the cartoon... Bosko and Bosko's "mammy"... the cannibals weren't blacks, but they were frogs... Now I'm not sure exactly why they were characterized as cannibals for wanting to eat Bosko, since they were frogs and he was a human, but maybe the ate other frogs from other frog tribes when there weren't humans to eat... Anyway, I first watched this cartoon when I was very young and found the frogs to be quite frightening... I know if I had been Bosko, I would have given those frogs Grandma's cookies and hightailed it out of there as fast as my sneakers would have carried me... Anyway, (spoiler alert) Bosko held onto his cookies and didn't give them to the frogs... Boskos was a good boy and you could tell that his "mammy" loved him every bit as much as the viewers... Great cartoon... If you can't find a better copy, sometimes you can download it from youtube...

Wonderful Score

[edward_eubanks · 10/10 · 8 February 2002]

Little Bosko is giving cookies by his mother to take to grandma. Bosko has a big imagination. Instead of being hunted by a wolf, Lil Black Bosko is hunted by cookie-loving cannibals.

Lots of racial caricatures common at that time. Cartoons like this can't be made now and shouldn't have been made then but the great score and wonderful animation superbly redeems this cartoon.

If you like Fats Waller, you'll like these cookies.

Bosko and cannibals in one of the best Bosko cartoons there is

[TheLittleSongbird · 8/10 · 20 June 2017]

The Bosko cartoons may not be animation masterpieces, but they are fascinating as examples of Looney Tunes in their early days before the creation of more compelling characters and funnier and more creative cartoons. There are some good cartoons, as well as some average or less ones.

While there are a handful of above average and more Bosko cartoons, some are also unmemorable and only average and others less than that. The good news is that 'Little Ol' Bosko and the Cannibals' is one of his best cartoons, one of his funniest, most charming and most inventive, with some of the best animation and music of all his cartoons.

'Little Ol' Bosko and the Cannibals' only real faults is the story's relative paper thinness. Then again Bosko cartoons have never ought to be seen for their stories, as it is always one of their weaker assets even in the good ones.

Contrary to what some may think, while there are stereotypes there is nothing here that offends to the extent that one dismisses 'Little Ol' Bosko and the Cannibals' for racism. To me, there was nothing here that was racist, even if the cannibal characters' character designs and how they behave is done in a stereotypical manner that isn't necessarily subtle but it's also very entertaining.

Bosko, while not necessarily an interesting or well developed character, is fun and likable and he doesn't feel like too much of a supporting character. The supporting characters add a lot here.

As always for a Bosko cartoon the animation is good. Some of the most refined of all the Bosko cartoons, fluid and crisp enough with some nice detail, it is especially good in the meticulous backgrounds and some remarkably flexible yet natural movements for Bosko. The music doesn't disappoint either and actually some of the best music in terms of how it's written and used in a Bosko cartoon, its infectious energy, rousing merriment, lush orchestration and how well it fits with the animation is just a joy.

Gags all hit the mark, no misses here, a lot of them being the funniest and most inventive of the later Bosko cartoons and even Bosko in general. Hard to go into specifics here due to all of them working.

All in all, after a period of forgettable or worse Bosko cartoons (none terrible though), with a few good ones in the mix, 'Little Ol' Bosko and the Cannibals' is a very pleasant surprise. 8/10 Bethany Cox

Jam Session In The Jungle

[Vimacone · 8/10 · 25 February 2018]

Hugh Harman's THE OLD MILL POND (1936) was such a hit with audiences, that he repeated the formula several more times over the next year. The film caricatured famous African-American singers and entertainers as frogs performing in a bayou. His star Bosko would be paired with the jazz frogs in unconventional settings.

Bosko had been redesigned into a quasi-realistic African American boy in 1935 after the studio started producing their cartoons in 3-strip Technicolor. Aside from the name, there was virtually nothing in common with the Bosko that starred in the first Looney Tunes. This Bosko was a typical little boy with a big imagination. In the second of three cartoons, where his mother has him deliver a bag of cookies to his grandmother, he imagines himself on a tropical island inhabited by frog cannibals. Like the previous film, they want his bag of cookies and go to great lengths to snatch it from him. What makes this cartoon very memorable is the catchy jazz tunes that play on the soundtrack from start to finish and the frantic paced chase scenes between Bosko and the frogs. But like the other entries, Bosko manages to outsmart them and escape.

While the Bosko films have not been shown on television nor been officially released on an official media format (with a couple exceptions), the character doesn't seem as degrading as an African-American character compared to the other stereotypes of that era. There are still some stereotypical aspects of the character, but they're kept at a minimum overall. Another negative for this film is caricaturing famous African Americans as cannibals, which is quite degrading to them, despite their great performances. I'd like to know who did the voices.

I'd like to see these films released on bluray, if not for the musical scores and the lush production values.