Robert Reynolds This is a short in the Silly Symphonies series produced by Disney. There will be spoilers ahead:This is a rather uninteresting short. The animation is good and thee character designs are excellent, but the gags are disappointing and there's very little of this worth watching. There's one decent joke, a cameo by the Marx Brothers as the Marx Birds, but that lasts a few seconds.The short looks like it has something going for it toward the middle, when a parrot encounters a typewriter and a telephone, but it doesn't go very far. The attempt to inject some drama near the end by having a cat go after a baby bird could have worked, but it's too similar to the ending of The Spider and the Fly and comes off as inferior.This short is available on the Disney Treasures More Silly Symphonies DVD set. The set is worth looking for, but this short is for completists.

TheLittleSongbird I say this with a heavy heart, as I love the Disney Silly Symphonies in general. They are fun and charming with beautiful animation and music as well as some endearing characters. I found little of that evident with The Bird Store, as a matter of fact it ties with El Terrible Toreador as not only the worst Silly Symphony but also my least favourite also. The only good things are the unique character designs of the birds, the energetic music(and even that asset has been better before and since The Bird Store), the gag where the bird is chirping in love to another while another set has one chirping with its mate crying is decent if over too quick and the character of the parrot, the only character to really stand out.The cat also showed promise to work, but in the end it was all wasted potential, what the character is made to do is nothing new or even fun. The birds are cute and look unique, especially the ones that look as though they had just come out of Cannibal Capers, but nothing is done beyond that. Apart from the character designs, the animation is a disappointment, the black and white lacks crispness and the backgrounds are really sparse-looking. Few of the gags worked also, a couple did so, but even they were only mildly amusing rather than hilarious. But the main problem is that aside from the lack of freshness the gags are over too soon and the ones that follow on and on become increasingly irrelevant from one another. Another big letdown was the story, now there were other cartoons that had little plot but the content showed more originality in those than here. The first half of The Bird Store is not just plot-less, it's also dull. The second half is a little better as we get some hint of a story, but the bland and unoriginal action hinders it.So overall, really disappointing. While not irredeemable it is a big step down in quality compared to the usual standard of this generally fine series of cartoon shorts. 4/10 Bethany Cox

Ron Oliver A Walt Disney SILLY SYMPHONY Cartoon Short.There is much flit & flutter in THE BIRD SHOP, especially after a vicious black cat gets in and goes after a baby canary...This is a fairly interesting little black & white cartoon, with lots of action/reaction animation. The pace really picks up with the arrival of the ferocious feline. Movie mavens will notice that four of the birds are spoofs of the Marx Brothers.The SILLY SYMPHONIES, which Walt Disney produced for a ten year period beginning in 1929, are among the most fascinating of all animated series. 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.

Squonk 'The Bird Store' is a plotless, black and white Silly Symphony. The first half is just scenes of different animated birds squawking out a melody. It doesn't take long for that to get pretty annoying, you'll be scrambling for the mute button. The second half centers on what happens when a cat wanders in to the bird store. The only thing I really found enjoyable here was the unique designs of some of the bird characters. I especially enjoyed the four birds made to look like the Marx Brothers. It's certainly not required viewing.