Some fireflies light up the entrance to a nightclub for bugs. There is every conceivable kind of creepy-crawly one can imagine. They dance; they sing; they play instruments. It is quite the colorful presentation, but the jazzy music is the strongest part of this cartoon. Pretty well done Silly Symphony.
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Hitchcoc9 March 2019
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OllieSuave-00722 May 2018A cleverly animated and fun cartoon featuring of bunch of insects and bugs out on the town one night, singing and dancing, as well as watching a live theater featuring a villainous spider and a damsel-in-distress fly. The fireflies serving as light bulbs are also a clever touch.
Grade B- -
patsupfan21 November 2007Only in the golden age of animation would you see bugs portrayed as swingin', jivin', jazz-lovin' critters. Woodland Cafe, which was sadly among the last 10 Silly Symphony cartoons to be produced, is one of the finest cartoons I have ever seen, with it's swingin' beats, it's cool characters (they don't really need to say much to make the short fun), and the way that it's just all-around fun. Notably, if you ever somehow see it on TV (it'd take a miracle for that to happen, mind you), there is some selective editing here and there; unlike most cartoons it's hard to really pick out exactly what is edited out, except for a scene with a ladybug smoking behind a curtain. All in all, this is one of the best cartoons of the series.
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TheLittleSongbird24 July 2012As someone who loves or at least really likes a vast majority of the Disney Silly Symphonies, Woodland Cafe was always one of those that fascinated me as a kid and I still have a lot of affection for it now. The definite highlight for me was definitely the music, although I have always found the music consistently great in the Silly Symphonies I don't think I have seen a Silly Symphony in a while that has had music as upbeat and catchy as Woodland Cafe. The dancing and choreography are just as fun and energetic, really makes you wish you were there too doing the same thing. The animation is wonderful, with beautifully coloured backgrounds and the bugs are equally vibrant and engaging. It is difficult to pick a favourite scene(or even a couple) when everything just grabbed your attention all the way through, though the scenes when a waiter pulls a stem off a cherry and pours the juice out into glasses for an elderly bee and with the show between the female fly and the male spider always did stand out. I have seen the issue of the stereotypes being raised on numerous occasions. I won't deny it, the characters are stereotypical, but considering that the cartoon is a spoof on the "Harlem" musicals of the time and that I didn't find them offensive at all(in fact they were somewhat affectionate to me), that wasn't a problem. So in conclusion, a cartoon that I have always found fascinating and still love to this day. 10/10 Bethany Cox
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CuriosityKilledShawn2 September 2013More like a woodland nightclub.
This short features bugs on a night out in a tree filled with centipede waiters, grasshopper bands, and spider theater villains. The entire short is fueled by the music, which is typical of the Silly Symphonies brand, but while it initially showed a little bit of promise it got boring in the middle. Without a single character to focus on and to tell a story with many Silly Symphonies end up being quite forgettable.
The animation is bright, colorful, and imaginative, and it even has a bit of dialogue/singing from the Jazz-singing grasshoppers. There's not much to it other than this. -
llltdesq10 April 2002This short is an example of The Mouse at their best! There was a time when Disney was, without a doubt, the best there was. 1937 was a good year for Uncle Walt and his studio. With Snow White and the Seven Dwarves and shorts like this one, it was a banner year. This is a quintessential example of Silly Symphonies-a near seamless blend of music to animation. Good to see it in-print. Well worth getting. Most highly recommended.
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planktonrules17 April 2020"Woodland Café" is a film that I am sure the Disney Corporation would like to forget about, as it hasn't aged well. Well, at least in some ways it hasn't aged well. The animation is terrific...as is the Technicolor. But the idea of making a Cotton Club for bugs starring 'black' bugs as entertainers simply is a dated stereotype...one that many today would find offensive.
By the way, the dance between the spider and the lady bug is called 'The Apache Dance'...a French dance popularized in Bohemian cafés. It is supposed to parody a fight between a pimp and one of his working girls and it is an odd choice for a kids film.
Overall, well animated but strange and easy to skip. Not bad...just not all that good either. -
Ron Oliver20 August 2000A Walt Disney SILLY SYMPHONY Cartoon Short.
This cartoon portrays a typical evening at the WOODLAND CAFÉ, that popular insect hot spot. A wide assortment of ugly bugs are kept entertained by apache dancers (a spider & a fly) and dancing to Big Band music.
A delightful little cartoon. The Disney animators show their versatility once again in their depiction of all things buggy. The film is also a spoof of Swing in general & Cab Calloway in particular.
The SILLY SYMPHONIES, which Walt Disney produced for a ten year period beginning in 1929, are among the most interesting of series in the field of animation. Unlike the Mickey Mouse cartoons in which action was paramount, with the Symphonies the action was made to fit the music. There was little plot in the early Symphonies, which featured lively inanimate objects and anthropomorphic plants & animals, all moving frantically to the soundtrack. Gradually, however, the Symphonies became the school where Walt's animators learned to work with color and began to experiment with plot, characterization & photographic special effects. The pages of Fable & Fairy Tale, Myth & Mother Goose were all mined to provide story lines and even Hollywood's musicals & celebrities were effectively spoofed. It was from this rich soil that Disney's feature-length animation was to spring. In 1939, with SNOW WHITE successfully behind him and PINOCCHIO & FANTASIA on the near horizon, Walt phased out the SILLY SYMPHONIES; they had run their course & served their purpose. -
pixrox14 September 2021. . . polluting WOODLAND CAFE? If an elementary student drew such filth in a notebook on school property, he'd be expelled, drawn and quartered. Only an extremely sick mind could have produced this anti-American garbage and emptied his trash upon an unsuspecting public. How many of the murders featured in MISSISSIPPI BURNING were prompted by WOODLAND CAFE's crickets? Perhaps we'll never know.
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Kirpianuscus16 June 2020Seductive for the fine - amusing portrait of a period. Not surprising but seductive for clear references, for precise irony and for imagination.