Jingle Bells (1927) *** (out of 4)Dave Fleischer directed this animated short that shares similarities with those "follow the bouncing ball" films that had movie audiences singing a song before the picture started. The difference here is that we've got an animated character helping create the song lyrics on the screen and we get a few other animated effects. This thing clocks in less than three-minutes so there's obviously nothing ground-breaking here but if you're a fan of the Fleischer animation then you'll certainly want to watch it. Again, this is just a simple song but it was fun for what it was.

this early Fleischer Screen Song turned up today on Cartoon Research. It is a barebones effort, with just an animated line drawing playing with the lyrics, without any of the elaborate set-up and gag structure that would make the series such a delight in the 1930s.Well, there's a very good reason for that and it's financial: this was produced in 1927 and there were maybe half a dozen theaters in the world that could play the soundtrack. It was a purely experimental film. Even so, the Fleischers had been experimenting with sound cartoons for three years at this point.The Fleischers' name doesn't appear on the print Apparently after they lost control of their studio and Paramount let the copyright lapse, some one decided to pick up a few bucks by reissuing it. Good for those of us who enjoy seeing stuff like this, even if the sound is pretty poor.