User Reviews

"A Royal Good Time" is a cartoon from RKO starring Otto Soglow's creation, the Little King. I've seen a few of them and must say that this is far from one of the better Little King cartoons (that would be the adorable "Christmas Night"). The animation is weak, the premise is weak and the portion with the African Dodger* is in very poor taste.

In this film, the Little King slips away from his palace to enjoy a carnival. Mostly instead of plot, it involves the King going from one vignette after another until a turban-wearing man inexplicably gives chase. So, as you can guess...not a whole lot in the way of plot.

*An 'African Dodger' was a very distasteful carnival game in which folks paid to throw balls at a black man who put his head through the back wall of the pavilion!

Van Beuren cartoons are extremely variable, especially in the number of gags and whether the absurdist humour shines through enough (sometimes it does, other times it doesn't), but are strangely interesting. Although they are often poorly animated with barely existent stories and less than compelling lead characters, they are also often outstandingly scored, there can be some fun support characters and some are well-timed and amusing.

The nine (Fleischer did the tenth, and there were two Sentinel Louey cartoons also adapted from Otto Soglow) The Little King cartoons from Van Beuren based on the work of Otto Soglow are generally among Van Beuren's better efforts. 'A Royal Good Time' is a contender for the weakest The Little King cartoon and isn't demonstrative of Van Beuren's Soglow adaptations being among the best, most ambitious and most entertaining efforts overall of theirs.

Most of the Little King cartoons from Van Beuren were among their best-looking efforts. The detailed backgrounds here in 'A Royal Good Time' are the closest it gets here to reaching that standard.

Some lively pacing and amusing moments here and there. Best of all, like pretty much all of Van Beuren's work, is the music, being lively and beautifully and cleverly orchestrated.

However, 'A Royal Good Time' is the first time where the character designs aren't so smooth, here looking unusually crude. The story is thin and was in serious need mostly of more momentum. What not enough there is of the humour is pretty charmless and only mildly amusing at best.

Usually an appealing lead character, The Little King's role is pretty dull with not much to it. His turban-wearing foil is not that interesting or entertaining either.

In summary, generally like The Little King cartoons but this was not so good from personal opinion. 4/10 Bethany Cox