2hotFeature one of my absolute favorites!

Matialth Good concept, poorly executed.

MoPoshy Absolutely brilliant

Allissa .Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

BA_Harrison A virtually plot-less Warner Brothers animated short from 1938, 'Have You Got Any Castles?' takes place in a library on a snowy night, where classic characters from an eclectic selection of books come alive to sing, dance and fight.The only thing stranger about this cartoon than it being an extra on my DVD of Sonny Chiba's The Street Fighter is the praise it gets from virtually everyone here on IMDb. They seem to find 'Have You Got Any Castles?' utterly charming and very amusing, whereas I found it to be terribly dated, nauseatingly twee, and fairly dull, with nasty characterisation (including several cruel racial stereotypes), predictable puns, and 'topical' jokes that might amuse avid fans of 30s film and popular literature, but which will probably leave many of today's viewers wondering what the fuss is all about.

Michael_Elliott Have You Got Any Castles? (1938)*** (out of 4) Extremely entertaining Merrie Melodies short has a familiar plot but it's taken to the limit here. The animated film pretty much takes place on a book shelf as various forms of literature comes to life. We get various stories including Frankenstein, The Invisible Man, The House of Seven "Gables", So Big, Dracula, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Little Women, The Thin Man, The Good Earth and countless others. The animation is quite good throughout this short with a lot of great attention to various details. There are a few Hollywood celebs who make appearances here including W.C. Fields and a funny spoof with Clark Gable. Mel Blanc does fine work in the form of several of the characters but we'd come to expect nothing less. What really makes this film stand apart from countless others that tried the same story is the actual music, which is incredibly entertaining. Carl W. Stalling and Milt Franklyn hit all the right notes and really keep the action moving. Everything mixed together makes this one of the better ways to tell this familiar stories so fans of animation or any of the books mentioned should have a grand time.

phantom_tollbooth One of the books-come-to-life series of cartoons that peaked with Bob Clampett's 'Book Revue', 'Have You Got Any Castles?' is a strong and extremely handsome piece of work. Much of the credit must go to underrated director Frank Tashlin whose work on this short is superb. At this early stage in their history, the Merrie Melodies cartoons were seen as prestige efforts attempting to rival the success of the bigger budget Disney Silly Symphony shorts, often by emulating them. The gorgeous look of 'Have You Got Any Castles?' owes something to Disney but Tashlin's cartoon has much better gags than the average Disney short. 'Have You Got Any Castles?' is essentially plot less yet Tashlin keeps us engaged throughout with some inspired gags (my favourite being the Heidi gag) and beautiful animation. As with most early Merrie Melodies, 'Have You Got Any Castles?' revolves around music which can often be a nail in the coffin of these early era cartoons. Fortunately, 'Have You Got Any Castles?' is deftly executed. It could hardly be more different from Clampett's 'Book Revue' in terms of pacing and animation style but it's worth noting that the Clampett cartoon does borrow some ideas from this one. 'Have You Got Any Castles?' is far from what would become the recognisable Warner Bros. style but it manages to be hugely entertaining on its own merits, trumping the majority of Disney shorts from which it takes a degree of influence.

Robert Walker-Smith A previous reviewer wrote "The reference to Ferber's "So Big" makes fun of a vain actress. (I'm not positive about that caricature. Katharine Hepburn perhaps? She had been box office poison for some time.)"That was Greta Garbo. The urban legend about the size of her feet was current at the time, and several of these shorts (e.g., Hollywood Steps Out) reference that.The part about these 'topical' shorts that surprises me - my nine year old son, who has NO idea who any of these people are, watches these with almost as much enjoyment as the more timeless episodes. Some of the bits - Bill 'Bojangles' Robinson tap dancing up The 39 Steps, or the hideously dated images in the Cab Calloway sequence - which may strike him as offensive in years to come, just blend in with the rest for him right now.