Birds of a Feather (1931) User Reviews

Love the animation and music, but the rest of the cartoon is nothing all that special

[TheLittleSongbird · 7/10 · 27 May 2012]

I do enjoy the Silly Symphonies, having grown up with most of them, and I even would call some of them masterpieces. Birds of a Feather is not one of the masterpieces to me, but it isn't a piece of whatever either. For the first half of the cartoon the action is cute yet uneventful. The second half picks up the pace, and while not exceptional by all means there is signs of a story. I did like that in a sense, but in terms of the cartoon itself it was rather uneven, Birds of a Feather preferably should've been plot less the whole time or had a story throughout, two halves that had one or the other didn't completely mix for me. Some of the sequences of the first half are also rather slow-moving and basically just birds dancing and chirping to the music. However, the music is truly lovely, the birds are cute and the dancing while not much standout-worthy is well-choreographed. But the best asset was the animation, fluid and smooth with some very well done sequences, such as the opening part with the swans on the lake, the- different-bird-on-every-limb sequence, the birds flying in formation and dive bombing the hawk, how the peacock displays its feathers and the sophisticated idea of a group of baby chicks weave in and out of the mother hen's legs. Overall, nothing really special, but the animation and music are worth looking out for. 7/10 Bethany Cox

Is that the Roadrunner?

[CuriosityKilledShawn · 5/10 · 2 September 2013]

There's not much story to this very early black-and-white cartoon. It's just more of an animation showcase featuring birds going about their business - singing, preening, paddling etc.

One of the baby ducks even says "meep meep", long before Warner created the famous Roadrunner. A hawk (or vulture or something) swoops down to steal a chick for dinner, but as usual cartoons never portray the bloody carnage of real life so the bird eventually flies off with an empty tummy.

The sound design and music give the short a little extra dimension, though other than that it is way to primitive to have any sort of lasting appeal.

Animation is basically all this has going for it

[llltdesq · 7/10 · 2 October 2014]

This is an early Silly Symphonies short produced by Disney. Even though there isn't that much to this, there will be spoilers ahead:

This may be the template for a plot-less cartoon. There's no plot here, most of the gags are recycled and the animation is really the only thing to this cartoon.

This short shows various types of birds moving to music. The best part from the first half of the short is a peacock strutting around, eventually spreading its plumage, only to get a raspberry from a little duck.

The last three or so minutes of this attempts to inject some drama by having a chick taken from a farm by a predator bird. Another bird sees the chick get grabbed and calls out reinforcements. The birds get into a flying formation (a "Vee") and take off after the predator.

They ultimately rescue the chick, which reunites with its mother hen by calling out, "Mammy!" and there's a happy ending.

This short is available on the Disney Treasures Silly Symphonies DVD set. The set is worth tracking down.

They kind of flew the coop with this Symphony but it's enjoyable enough

[Foreverisacastironmess123 · 6/10 · 1 March 2020]

Hiya! So this pretty average Silly Symphony naturally features birds of various kinds as they glide, swoop, peck and strut their feathered stuff around a lake and through the trees to a merry music theme, and all is happy until a fearsome bird of prey snatches one of the chicken chicks, of which they must all swiftly work together to rescue before it's too late! The first part of the short is very simple and routine stuff with birds doing bird things to a repeating musical beat that has a nice rhythm and has a kind of a chorus with a bird chirping three times, all cute but nothing special, but it does pick up and get better in the second half when all the birds are swarming and dive bombing the mean hawk who was only out for a bite to eat! I thought the animation of that scene was the best in the short, it was very fluid and fast moving, remarkably similar to how a real large flock of birds look when they're way up in the sky. It did have a strong finish but that wasn't enough to make this short good for me. These earlier Silly Symphonies are basically all the same, a group of whatever are happy and then a menace of some sort appears that they gotta overcome and then they're happy again, not a bad recipe at all for the impressionable young minds of yesteryear but in my opinion in retrospect the Symphonies like these only really serve to remind you of everything they did so much better just a few years later on with shorts like The Ugly Duckling, and Birds in the Spring to name a few similar. To me a big part of the enjoyment of this series is seeing the craft of the animation slowly evolve and grow as you progress through it. This one's okay but it's nothing too great and it's definitely no gem of the series, the music verges on repetitive and the birds are a bit too cartoony, they hadn't got the hang of them yet. Yet another enjoyable but uninspired mere stepping stone of a Symphony on the path to the true greatness that this wonderful series of animations had to offer, fly free you precious little Symphony! X

Having this illustration of the common phrase . . .

[pixrox1 · 6/10 · 23 October 2021]

. . . BIRDS OF A FEATHER preserved for all posterity in the form of an animated short begs the question of what Civilization lost when the plans for such sure-fire hits as Crying over Split Milk, Two Peas in a Pod, Chip off the Old Block, Two Cents Worth, Penny for Your Thoughts, Penny Wise and Pound Foolish, The Cat's Got Your Tongue, Quakers' Meeting Has Now Begun, Silent as a Tomb, In for a Pound, Rubbing in Salt to the Wound, Trying to Pound a Square Peg, Gargling Peanut Butter, Squaring the Circle, Who Made You King, In the Land of the Blind, All that Glitters, Look What the Cat Dragged, Mad as a Hornet, Busy as an Ant, Sly as a Fox, Slippery as an Eel, Flaky as a Fish, The Cookie Crumbles, Weight Broke the Wagon, Hay is for Horses, Too Big for His Bridges, Pantries in a Knot, Drop in the Bucket, Pushing up Daisies, Buying the Farm, Don't Look a Gift Horse, Seeing is Believing, Looks are Deceiving, Thin as a Rail, Hungry as a Wolf, Deaf as a Board, Thick as Thieves, Time off for Good Behavior, Silence is Golden, A Stitch in Time, Two to Tango, He's Made His Bed, Hope for the Hopeless, Coals to Newcastle and Sharp as a Tack all fell through.

One exciting sequence.

[OllieSuave-007 · 6/10 · 3 July 2018]

There is really not too much to see here, just a bunch of birds working through the beat of whimsical music. There were a few clever sound and visual effects, but not much in exciting entertainment value. The only exciting sequence is when a group of birds tries to save a chick-let from a hawk.

Grade C

Pretty Standard Fare for the Thirties

[Hitchcoc · 7/10 · 30 November 2018]

Yes it's old hat. Each little vignette focus on an avian species, from crows to woodpeckers to owls. They each portray their respective stereotypes. Music, with the new sound technology, became overused and repetitive in these early offerings. The attack on the little black chick by the bird of prey gives it a plot. Of course, the flock of birds acts as a World War I attack squadron.

Just the sort of crap I hated as a child...and still hate today.

[planktonrules · 3/10 · 29 April 2012]

This black & white Silly Symphony cartoon is exactly the sort of cartoon I completely hated as a child. Instead of edgy or funny characters, it was chock-full of cutesy animals--tons of sweet birds. In addition, it had LOTS of music--with the animals all swaying to the music. In other words, it was practically plot-less. Only later in the film when a clichéd 'evil' bird attacks is there any action, as the nice birds all band together to thwart evil. Sheesh! What a boring cartoon!! Although I adore early Disney cartoons, occasionally they came up with a lame one here or there...and this is certainly one of them. Unfortunately, this sort of saccharine was pretty popular with other cartoon makers in the 30s--particularly the Harmon-Ising cartoons. When I was a kid, they showed them on TV a lot and all my friends and I hated them. Fortunately, they have mostly been shelved in favor of better toons. Don't you and your kids deserve better?

By the way, I noticed a score of 10 for this cartoon. While I totally respect the other reviewer's right to score it this high, they give 10s to all Disney cartoons. I, on the other hand, am more demanding and grouchy when it comes to these shorts. I've given a few 10s and 9s to some Silly Symphonies--so I am not impossible to please!

Offensive AGAIN

[kaicesbr · 1/10 · 15 July 2023]

Continuing my marathon of Disney shorts, as usual they are not available on Disney plus and I have to hunt on YouTube. First time watching. I'll watch and comment.

Same thing as always.

It was doing so well, almost going to grade 3, here comes a stereotyped "joke".

Another Silly Symphony short film with minimal rating for me. Simply awful.. Conclusion: It was almost a decent short but at the very end there's the classic "mammy" that I don't know why the old USA or even some of today liked/liked and thought/find it funny.

Offensive again. More one short of the Silly Symphony very bad again.

Disney's Visit To Bird Land In Early Animation

[Ron Oliver · 10/10 · 14 September 2000]

A Walt Disney SILLY SYMPHONY Cartoon Short.

It is a beautiful day, and the BIRDS OF A FEATHER of the forest & farmyard are romancing their mates and tending to their young. That is, until a rapacious raptor comes on the scene & carries off a baby chick...

This black & white cartoon is another example of how important music (often classical) was to the Symphonies.

The SILLY SYMPHONIES, which Walt Disney produced for a ten year period beginning in 1929, are among the most interesting of series in the field of animation. Unlike the Mickey Mouse cartoons in which action was paramount, with the Symphonies the action was made to fit the music. There was little plot in the early Symphonies, which featured lively inanimate objects and anthropomorphic plants & animals, all moving frantically to the soundtrack. Gradually, however, the Symphonies became the school where Walt's animators learned to work with color and began to experiment with plot, characterization & photographic special effects. The pages of Fable & Fairy Tale, Myth & Mother Goose were all mined to provide story lines and even Hollywood's musicals & celebrities were effectively spoofed. It was from this rich soil that Disney's feature-length animation was to spring. In 1939, with SNOW WHITE successfully behind him and PINOCCHIO & FANTASIA on the near horizon, Walt phased out the SILLY SYMPHONIES; they had run their course & served their purpose.