User Reviews

For any lover of animation who grew up in the 1960s or later, Fleischer's Stone Age Series will turn out to be quite familiar in concept: Hanna-Barbera would ransack its viewpoint, takethe lead characters of Jackie Gleason's HONEYMOONERS skits and set them down in a world much like current America, but in which animal power took the place of electric power and in which everything was made of stone.

In this example of the Fleischer series, hubby sneaks off one evening to the local gambling club while wifey is snoozing. The jokes are predictable, although they are well executed, as one should expect of the Fleischer studio. The series petered out within a year, after the initial gag was exhausted.

Really like to love a lot of Fleischer Studios' early/earlier cartoons. Just wanted to make that clear before anybody thinks there is any bias. The best of Popeye, Koko and Betty Boop are especially worth watching, but their cartoons from around 1940 onwards did not represent them anywhere as well. The Stone Age series and the worst of the Gabby cartoons don't do Fleischer justice, neither do most of the Animated Antics cartoons.

'Way Back When a Nightclub Was a Stick' is better than the previous Stone Age cartoon 'Way Back When a Nag Was Only a Horse' and towards the better end perhaps of the series. Despite a couple of things done better, it does still have most of the flaws from that though and does show how drastically Fleischer declined in a fairly short period of time. Liked the idea for the Stone Age series, but the execution on the most part was really wanting.

The best thing about 'Way Back When a Nightclub Was a Stick' is the music score. Not one that will stick in the head for days, but it is suitably merry and lush and dynamic with what's going on. The animation is a little better, not great still but it's not as crude.

Although there is really not much to work with, the voices don't fare too badly. If it was Fleischer regular Jack Mercer responsible, he does sound as if he was giving his all. There are a few nice visual gags and although very thin and predictable there is much more of a story here, with there being more of a purpose and not being quite as much a stringing along of gags.

It is still not a great cartoon though, in my mind it was still pretty mediocre. There is a lack of energy and takes too long to get going. More could have been done with the nightclub setting, which is more vibrant and risky than shown here, a few nice visual gags aside this was a pretty bland depiction. 'Way Back When a Nightclub Was a Stick' is mostly unfunny too, there could have been far more and more imagination and freshness was needed, this was tired predictable stuff.

Story-wise, it is not as non-existent but it is not a particularly engaging one still and one has seen it all before (and better). Didn't care for the characters, all unappealing and with not much personality, really couldn't stand the overbearing wife character that the cartoon went pretty over the top with. The animation is a little better here but a lower budget does show, still looking basic.

Overall, better than the previous cartoon but mediocre. 4/10