Very well executed

Expected more

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

This is a 7-minute animated short film which won a BAFTA and also the Oscar back in 1951 against competition from Mr. Magoo and Tom&Jerry. In the center of it is a little boy who does not speak, but makes artificially created noises instead, such as the sound of a locomotive. His parents are obviously very worried, but no doctor can help, no teacher can help and the contact with children of his age goes all kinds of wrong too. Until he finally finds his spot where his unique disability is appreciated. The film's director is Robert Cannon and he made a couple more short films with the character, but it gets old pretty quickly and the charm is gone then. Some more famous people from animated movies contributed to this film in different positions, such as Dr. Seuss, Bill Melendez and John Hubley. Worth a watch in my opinion, good short film and I also liked the animation style and colors.

I've mixed views about this Oscar winning cartoon.On the script side, it's still worth while to watch, and so much more so, 50 years and as many big wars since WW2, as humankind is less human, less kind, and less able to understand the deep self of the people across the Ocean, or the street.Gerald is a mute boy, only able to pronounce boing-boing. When extraterrestrials from the planet Moo descend on his backyard, and take him in their flying-saucer, as a human specimen for study, they got the impression that all earthlings spoke like that. Being very clever, the extraterrestrials develop a language based on boing-boing intonations, and are still sending messages to Earth with the only sentence, "boing-boing".On the drawing, colors, and repetitiveness, and also stridency, of the "language" signs, I'm afraid I'm not with the majority here. Even when I saw this title in 1965, I found it too simplistic, and still do. I grant you that I was not the child this cartoon aims at, and today's manga and similar comics are 300% worse than this, but I would not accord this title an Oscar...(First posted September 19, 2003; re-posted after clarifying with IMDb that it belongs here, not with the 1956 longer version of this cartoon, similarly titled.)

Gerald McBoing-Boing (1951) *** (out of 4) Oscar-winning, animated short has a story by Dr. Seuss so you know it's going to be something special. The film tells the story of Bobby McBoing who never learns to speak and instead just makes various noises including "boing" over and over. His parents slowly begin to get upset because he can't speak normal words and after a while it's hard for them to know what to do when nothing but sounds come out of his mouth. This is a pretty interesting little short as it's clear they didn't spend too much money on the thing but at the same time there's a strong touch of imagination that makes it worth watching. The animation style is I guess what you'd call "simple" as there aren't any grand backgrounds, beautiful images or rich colors. Instead the drawings are pretty simple and not particularly ground breaking but they are unique in their own way. I think the real key to this thing are the sound effects and how they use them to tell the story. The constant "boing" is charming in its own way but what's really funny are the train noises and various other ones that scare Gerald's father when he's shaving.

MCBOING BOING is one of the cartoons that have stuck in my head over the years and finally decided to look into it as was pleasantly surprised and was also surprised on the people involved with the production. If I remember correctly we had to watch it on a UHF station and this meant using a converter in those days UHF not part of regular TV to tune in the local station to watch the cartoon a big deal in those days which made the show even more mysterious. I remember all the sound effects that Gerald used to talk. A great memory from 50+ years ago. I'll have to see what other memories might be hiding on the web. By the way I try to do computer animation thats where the johnl3d comes into the picture