Beystiman
It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.
Breakinger
A Brilliant Conflict
Jerrie
It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...
OllieSuave-007
Walt Disney was on a role with these Silly Symphonies, letting his imagination run wild with clever and miraculous sequences of magic. Here, a baby is transported to Lullaby Land while dreaming, where we see a display of pacifiers, diapers, bottles, and blankets come to life. We also see anti-babies stuff such as scissors, knives, fountain pens, and matches, which haunt the kid and his doll dog as well. It is nice to include some baby-themed characters in the cartoon as well, including the Boogeyman and the Sandman. Neat stuff here.Grade B
Robert Reynolds
This is an early color short in the Silly Symphonies series produced by the Disney studio. There will be spoilers ahead:The animation in this cartoon is beautifully done, but there isn't very much beyond that to the short. A baby is sung to sleep and winds up visiting Lullaby Land, which looks pretty much as you might expect-trees with pacifiers and powder puffs, animated potty chairs with a chamber pot joke (which happened fairly often in 1930s Disney shorts) and diapers with safety pins on parade and so on.The short veers off into the "Forbidden Garden" and, briefly, the short looks like it might just turn interesting, but it's just more of the same types of gags, only with things which "will hurt baby that he mustn't touch". Baby starts a FIRE! by playing with matches and one of the better bits arises from three smoke-inspired demons which are the most interesting part of the short.The Sandman finally puts baby to sleep and the dream mercifully ends, to be followed shortly by the end of the cartoon.This short is available on the Disney Treasures Silly Symphonies DVD set and the set itself is worth getting.
MartinHafer
I am apparently a tough judge of cartoons. While I noticed one reviewer gave EVERY Disney short from the 30s a 10, I am much harder to please. Sure, I've awarded some 10s and quite a few 9s--but also a few 2s and 3s, as some of these early cartoons are just dreadful despite the fine standard of animation they have achieved under Walt Disney's guidance. That's because through the 1930s, cartoons were nothing like they were in the 40s and 50s. They were rarely edgy and the emphasis in many of the toons was on cuteness--something many today would find hard to take. Disney actually avoided this more than many of the companies of the era, as the Harmon-Ising singing cartoons were REALLY cutesy and saccharine compared to Disney's. However, sometimes Disney released one that borders today on torture to have to watch--and I would sure like to see cartoons like "Lullaby Land" used to interrogate prisoners--though I am sure that Amnesty International and other human rights groups would complain about this being inhuman torture!!! This cartoon finds an especially cute little toddler in some sort of dream world where again and again, he nearly kills himself playing with matches and doing other things kids are NOT supposed to do. I really think the cartoon was intended as some sort of indoctrination for the young ones--to tell them what not to do in a very heavy-handed sort of manner. To make it worse, there is a hellishly saccharine chorus that sings about safety!! Ugghhh!!! Make it stop!!! When the green Boogeymen appear, I assumed it would get better--but then they began singing and dancing, too!! Ultimately, some creepy wizard appears and rescues the tyke. It's the Sandman--no, not of the Neil Gaiman variety, but the type that sings the little kid to sleep (though I thought this was all already a dream?!). Ultimately, it ends on a note so sickeningly sweet that I am about to go into a diabetic coma. Please...do not watch this unless you are a masochist!
ArchObler
A beautiful cartoon, where all the elements of a baby's world are blown up to epic proportions in his dream. Not only entertaining, but it's also marked by a certain nostalgic quality in this modern disposable diaper world. **** out of ****
