. . . devoting a large part of this first Looney Tune (NOT including the free-lanced outsider pilot proposal) to vivisecting and digesting the House of Mouse's Rodent D'Etre. This vivid incident occurs during the first half of HOLD ANYTHING, during which high-rise construction worker and Warner Bros. Blue Collar Hero Bosko takes a break from Girdering to torture a Dead Ringer for Mickey Mouse. This unfortunate little creature is subjected to a Warped and Anachronistic Version of the X-Games by being forced to perform his 360s, 540s, and 720s tricks off the platform of Bosko's musical saw. After watching (and listening to) Mickey's full repertoire, Bosko allows the saw to slice him in half. Mickey is later beheaded, and immediately after he's "fixed" (like a cheap pop-bead doll) Bosko plops him into the yawning mouth of an insatiable She-Goat. Though Mickey emerges from her tummy trap door after a bit (apparently in deference to younger viewers who might be traumatized by seeing Mickey Trumped out of the goat's butt the natural way), Mickey soon disappears from view as this story segues into Bosko's affair with Honey. (As it says in Trump's Corinthians Two, he no longer has time for childish Disney things.)

Although Walt Disney was producing exceptional cartoons circa 1930, Warner Brothers (through Leon Schlessinger Studios) was way behind on the curve. The quality of their Bosko series was clearly light-years behind Mickey Mouse--mostly because the cartoons weren't especially funny or charming. Instead, they were rather corny. Because of this, you practically never (thank goodness) see these cartoons today.Here in HOLD ANYTHING, Bosko is working around a construction site. He sees his girlfriend and they begins making eyes at each other. It's all a bit mushy and they dance around a bit until eventually (and mercifully) it all ends. The only interesting part is when Bosko cuts the head off a mouse that looks amazingly like Mickey!

Since the previous reviewer mentioned most of the details of Hold Anything, I'll just mention that the mice look uncannily like Walt Disney's Mickey. Perhaps not surprising since directors Hugh Harmon and Rudolf Ising had previously worked for Disney as animators when he created Oswald the Lucky Rabbit with Ub Iwerks with the rabbit looking like the Famous Mouse with long ears and a fluffy tail. Another entertaining musical short that seems inspired by the fame of the first successful sound cartoon, Steamboat Willie, that put Mickey Mouse and Walt Disney on the map of iconic status. Worth a look for anyone interested in Warner Bros. animation before Tex Avery arrived to give it a new identity.

This is a fairly typical early Bosko and is reasonably amusing. There are one or two points I want to discuss in some detail, some "Here there be spoilers": This short is musically-oriented and lots of things become musical instruments in the hands of Bosko, his work crew (a bunch of small, strangely familiar mice) and Bosko's girlfriend. It is to the temporary misfortune of one particular mouse that Bosko is his foreman. The mouse falls off a wall and lands on a saw, which starts making music. Bosk starts bending and warping the saw to get musical notes from it, which tosses the mouse up into the air. At one point, the mouse comes down on the saw-teeth and his head lands on one side and his body on the other. You then see the head and the body moving around on the saw as Bosko bends and warps it to make music as the body and head frantically try to get back together.Later on in the short, Bosko sees Honey in an office and goes across to her window by using musical notes as steppingstones in mid-air. He proceeds to put sheet music in her typewriter and play it like a piano. The capper on the music from unusual sources is Bosko's use of a goat as bagpipes.This has quite a few of the visual gags that would be used frequently in the Bosko shorts, such as Bosko breaking up into lots of little Boskos after hitting the ground and the playing of music when running across steps or bricks where the path is differentiated enough to resemble a keyboard or a xylophone.Good, if rather standard, Bosko short. Worht watching, if you get the opportunity. Recommended.