I would like to take a moment this holiday season to discuss the animated Christmas movie, Cricket on the Hearth. It is possible, even likely, that you have never seen this movie; in this eventuality I recommend that you offer a gift of thanks to whichever household gods watch over your hearth this Winter Solstice, because Cricket is, in my estimation, the worst cartoon ever made.
Although I hesitate to use the term 'plot' to grace the meandering and directionless flow of events in this film, if one were willing to stretch the term, the "plot" can be summarized as follows. We are briefly treated to the news that, in Victorian England, having a cricket on your hearth was seen as a totem of good luck. To illustrate this belief, we are shown a family acquiring a lucky cricket, and almost immediately thereafter sinking into a near-endless saga of misery, deprivation, and grief, until ultimately it is reversed via several coincidental deus ex machina (almost literally, in one case) and what, in a better film than this, would be called a Christmas Miracle.
In the cricket's defense, the family largely inflicts this suffering on themselves, through the daughter's relentless narcissism and inability to deal with reality, and her father's poor judgment, economic illiteracy, and inability to prioritize the long term good of his family over indulging his daughter's character flaws. The story relies on each character making the stupidest possible decision at every junction and they do not disappoint.
The tale is further leadened with gratuitous violence (anthropomorphized animal characters are exploited in seedy bars and murdered by sailors) and both implicit and explicit mysogyny. This ranges from the subtle, as seen in the unquestioned assumption by all the characters and apparently by fate itself that the real problem with this family is the daughter's inability to secure marriage to a man of suitable prospects, to the gross, as when the cricket and the idiot sailor boyfriend share a bonding moment that could be accurately summarized as, "Bitches, man. Know what I mean?"
The narrative is punctuated by frequent asides for bizarre musical numbers with only a tangential relationship with the greater story. As is typical with many animated films of this period, frequent maudlin scenes of Christian mythology are awkwardly shoe-horned in, as characters pause in their deliberate destruction of their welfare and prosperity to meditate upon the poor Christ-child in his manger, surrounded by implausibly caucasian individuals of medieval attire.
Needless to say, the quality of animation is terrible, even by the standards of the day.
The awkwardness is bookended by introductory and summary live-action sequences with one of the voice actors, who apparently is appearing in this feature as a consequence of the Mafia's deep ties with Hollywood in the 1950s, through which a variety of fumbling, barely literate thugs found gainful employment for many years.
I was distressed to find that this saga of woe was based on a story by Charles Dickens. I plan on reading the original, hoping to reassure myself that Dickens has been but one more victim in this sordid experience.
Merry Christmas!
Although I hesitate to use the term 'plot' to grace the meandering and directionless flow of events in this film, if one were willing to stretch the term, the "plot" can be summarized as follows. We are briefly treated to the news that, in Victorian England, having a cricket on your hearth was seen as a totem of good luck. To illustrate this belief, we are shown a family acquiring a lucky cricket, and almost immediately thereafter sinking into a near-endless saga of misery, deprivation, and grief, until ultimately it is reversed via several coincidental deus ex machina (almost literally, in one case) and what, in a better film than this, would be called a Christmas Miracle.
In the cricket's defense, the family largely inflicts this suffering on themselves, through the daughter's relentless narcissism and inability to deal with reality, and her father's poor judgment, economic illiteracy, and inability to prioritize the long term good of his family over indulging his daughter's character flaws. The story relies on each character making the stupidest possible decision at every junction and they do not disappoint.
The tale is further leadened with gratuitous violence (anthropomorphized animal characters are exploited in seedy bars and murdered by sailors) and both implicit and explicit mysogyny. This ranges from the subtle, as seen in the unquestioned assumption by all the characters and apparently by fate itself that the real problem with this family is the daughter's inability to secure marriage to a man of suitable prospects, to the gross, as when the cricket and the idiot sailor boyfriend share a bonding moment that could be accurately summarized as, "Bitches, man. Know what I mean?"
The narrative is punctuated by frequent asides for bizarre musical numbers with only a tangential relationship with the greater story. As is typical with many animated films of this period, frequent maudlin scenes of Christian mythology are awkwardly shoe-horned in, as characters pause in their deliberate destruction of their welfare and prosperity to meditate upon the poor Christ-child in his manger, surrounded by implausibly caucasian individuals of medieval attire.
Needless to say, the quality of animation is terrible, even by the standards of the day.
The awkwardness is bookended by introductory and summary live-action sequences with one of the voice actors, who apparently is appearing in this feature as a consequence of the Mafia's deep ties with Hollywood in the 1950s, through which a variety of fumbling, barely literate thugs found gainful employment for many years.
I was distressed to find that this saga of woe was based on a story by Charles Dickens. I plan on reading the original, hoping to reassure myself that Dickens has been but one more victim in this sordid experience.
Merry Christmas!
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