Cartoons That Time Forgot: The Ub Iwerks Collection, Vol. 2 (Full Frame)

DVD, 190 minutes, DAVID SHEPARD

Cartoons That Time Forgot: The Ub Iwerks Collection celebrates the pioneering solo cartoon work of the legendary Ub Iwerks, who was Walt Disney's foremost animator/collaborator in the formative early years. These are historical cartoon shorts from the early 1930s, some of which haven't been seen since their initial theatrical release. Others are old friends now viewed for the first time on DVD in unfaded, pristine prints from the original negatives. "Down And Out With Flip The Frog;" Ub Iwerks' undisputed status as the co-inventor of Mickey Mouse has acted retrospectively as both a claim to fame and as a tough thing to live down. In designing Disney's Mouse, after all, Iwerks created an aggregation of blackened-in circle shapes which caused commotion everywhere and would amount to nothing less than one of the most resonant pop culture icons of the twentieth century, impossible to top. Small wonder that Iwerks' independently conceived Mickey followup, "Flip The Frog," born in 1930 and already deceased by 1933, has been relegated to footnote oblivion by most of today's official critical overviews. In taking one of his own bits from, say, the 1928 Mickey cartoon "The Karnival Kid" and reprising it in the 1932 Flip film "The Circus", with Flip now cast in the role of the showoffy food vendor who summarily "spanks" his trained hot dogs for not behaving properly, Iwerks could be accused, contradictorily, either of plagiarism or of shameless self-quotation.