Not a bad Silly Symphony featuring characters from Mother Goose poems, including Old King Cole, the Three Blind Mice, Little Miss Muffett, Jack and Jill, Humpty Dumpty, Little Jack Horner, Little Bo Peep, Little Boy Blue, and Hey Diddle Diddle.Some nice animation and musical notes. There were whimsical characters and carefree moments - perfect entertainment for kids.Grade B

This short is part of the Silly Symphonies series produced by Disney. There will be spoilers ahead:The animation here is very good throughout and the short starts off well, with the entrance of Old King Cole and his retinue. His "fiddlers three" are the Three Blind Mice (this blending of fairy tale characters from different tales continues later in the short) and Clarabelle Cow makes a cameo appearance.The cartoon becomes a bit disjointed once Mother Goose enters the short and her large book of fairy tales opens. There doesn't appear to be much rhyme or reason to the tales selected or the combinations and the character designs are sometimes odd. Jack and Jill seem to meet Simple Simon, but other than the name, nothing really happens which seems to relate to Simple Simon. The pairing of Little Bo Peep and Little Boy Blue works better There are some nice bits here, but it's a bit more chaotic than it probably should be. It's still worth watching.This short is available on the Disney Treasures Silly Symphonies DVD set and it and the set are well worth finding.

This kind of thing may well have fascinated children in 1931, but it's relic of a long-gone era in animation when watching it from a modern point of view, only without any nostalgia.Old King Cole is being entertained outdoor by various nursery rhyme characters who sing and dance. Only the materials for this cartoon are obviously so degraded that you can barely understand anything they are saying now. A prototype characters can be spotted among the basic, low grade, black and white animation.This is no classic. And will likely be only watched once by even Disney completists.

Did you know that Humpty Dumpty fell off the wall because a goose hit him with Jack's and Jill's pail? This is one of the many interesting takes this Silly Symphony has on the nursery rhymes many of us have heard countless times. As in most Silly Symphonies, many of the jokes are dated, and it is all too obvious that this work comes from a time when simply cartoons put to music itself was cool and funny. However, there is still plenty left for modern audiences to enjoy. Additionally, the music is quite fun and takes you immediately to a childlike mind-set. As in many early Disney cartoons, half of the laughs come from noticing the absurdities and oddities. Before Monty Python put King Arthur on an imaginary horse and gave the king a servant with the job of clicking together coconuts, Disney put Old King Cole's trumpeters on children's stick horses and gave the king a servant with the job of holding up the king's enormous stomach. This animated piece is an excellent example of where a great amount of our humor comes from; and it's still pretty dang funny.