Horst in Translation ([email protected]) "Balloon Land" is a cartoon from 1935, which means this one had its 80th anniversary last year. And that's why I think for its time, it was a rock-solid work and you could see in this one too that the Golden Age of Animation was approaching quickly. I do believe however that this one here (despite having color and sound) was just too generic for my taste. They created an interesting world (town) of unique creatures, but they failed to elaborate on it convincingly. It is all by the books. This one runs for 7 minutes as they usually do. Early on, we see the town where the action takes place, see some of the characters too and we are introduced to a balloon boy and girl who turn out the main characters. Then we meet the villain, a guy who has lots of needles and who looks a bid like a bad wolf (fittingly the door scene) and who is very dangerous to the balloon population. We also see him kill several balloon trees and also balloon soldiers during the film, which makes it pretty brutal if you think about it. Then the bad guy meets our two heroes and in the end, an army of balloon soldiers fights him and defeats him. I must say there is little in this film that has memorable value beyond the creatures being made of balloons. Iwerks and Bletcher, who made this one, are known to cartoon lovers of course, but this little film may not have been a contender for their best work. I give it a thumbs-down. Not recommended.

Michael_Elliott Balloon Land (1935) *** 1/2 (out of 4) The title refers to a land where everything from the houses to the people are made out of balloons. The people are trained to fear the Pincushion Man because he can obviously kill them. Two newly formed kids decide to test that theory by going into the woods where the Pincushion Man follows them home and starts to terrorize the community. This two-strip Technicolor short from U.B. Iwerks is actually an incredibly dark little picture considering that the entire subject deals with the possible death of these people and there's a sequence where the Pincushion Man goes on a murdering rampage through the city. This was certainly a highly entertaining film thanks in large part to the characters who were either lovable (the balloon people) or downright hated (Pincushion Man). Another very big positive was the wonderful colors used for everyone. I watched this with my son and he said they looked like ICEE colors and he was pretty much correct.

tavm Just watched this restored Ub Iwerks ComiColor cartoon on the DVD collection "Saved from the Flames". It is inhabited by creatures entirely made of balloons which includes three looking like Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, and Charlie Chaplin. Well, actually, there is a villain called the Pincushion Man who's what his name is and he likes popping anyone that comes near him so watch out! As with many of these '30s cartoons, there's plenty of music and the main characters are a boy and girl in love who persevere against all odds. The sound and colors are excellent and this was quite an entertaining cartoon from this period but I urge discretion if you want to expose your kids to this. So on that note, Balloon Land comes highly recommended.

JoeytheBrit Ub Iwerks, the man who helped create Mickey Mouse, was not a success as owner of his own studio, although his output was of a consistently high quality. This is one of his better cartoons from that period which provides a fine example of his lively imagination. The film opens with a deceptively light-hearted sequence in which we are treated to balloon versions of comic icons Laurel & Hardy and Chaplin and also see balloon children being born in Balloon Land. Things turn much darker, however, when two of the kids venture out into the forest, disregarding their elder's advise to stay away from the pin cushion man, a truly frightening creation.The juxtaposition of gaily coloured, cheerfully drawn balloon characters being popped to death at the hands of the devilish pin cushion man is certainly incongruous, but adds an edge to a cartoon that could so easily have gone the way of Walt Disney's far more soppy Silly Symphonies. It's a shame Iwerks didn't succeed as an independent - you can't help feeling that his imagination was never really given free rein once he returned to the Disney Studios following the collapse of his own studio.