Ruddigore

This is very easy to watch over and over again, and uses its short runtime for all it's worth. Standing up to repeated viewing is a great strength; I get sick of things pretty easily. It is a shame that the overture and many of the songs were cut (especially Mad Margaret's song) but on the other hand, brevity is the soul of wit.

The animation is cheap and wonky for a theatrical release, even for the sixties, but that's part of the charm à la Rocky and Bullwinkle. Gilbert's writing and sense of humor really leans towards the cartoony most of the time. Stephen Sondheim considered this a major flaw of his oeuvre, but if there were ever a place for that, it's as an actual cartoon. Now, consider the scene where the Murgatroyd ghosts come out of their portrait frames. CG was a distant dream of the future for most of the time Ruddigore has been around, so the best way to make the scene work is to make it all animated so nothing looks fake. Showing the backstory of the Murgatroyd curse is also smoother than having someone sing it--"show, don't tell," as they say.

I really like the way the characters are drawn (in fact, my profile picture is Mad Margaret.) This is just one of my favorite animated movies ever, and a good way to introduce your friends to G&S. Makes me wonder what a full-length, verbatim animated version of one of their operettas would be like.