Scrub Me Mama with a Boogie Beat (1941)
*** (out of 4)
Welcome to Lazy Town, home of various lazy black people who sit around sleeping and drawing flies all day or if they do work they work so slowly that nothing gets done. All of this is about to change when a sexy, big breasted woman from Harlem shows up to teach everyone what rhythm is. As you can tell, there's certainly a reason this cartoon, from the same man who would later bring us Woody Woodpecker, has been taken out of circulation. Once again it's rather shocking at how over the top this thing is in its stereotypes of black people. A lot of movies from this era feature negative portraits of black but this thing here is just so incredibly over the top that it comes off rather shocking. We have big lips, watermelon and that's just the start. The one thing that stuck out to me, like Warner's Coal Black and De Sebbin Dwarfs, is the sexuality behind the main female character. She's constantly swinging herself in a sexual way and her breasts are always shaking. Due to the Hayes Code this type of sexuality was never seen except in these racial shorts. What makes this film worth watching outside the history lesson is the music, which is downright terrific. The movie is certainly going back to the swinging jazz of the 20's and makes it worth watching.