A Very Merry Cricket (1973)

It’s a little hard to say whether this being a sequel helps it or hurts it.  I’d never seen the original until after watching this follow-up.  I’d read a synopsis and seen snippets but I very deliberately watched this one first to see if it works by itself.  On a technical level it does, the premise is laid out just fine and they give enough backstory within the narrative that it’s never confusing.  The major differences seem to be a fairly radical redesign for Harry the Cat and leaning way more into the usual cartoony bag of tricks since the narrative is fairly nonexistent and they have to fill the time with something.  It doesn’t add anything to the original, though, and isn’t substantial enough as a standalone story to justify its own existence.  It’s obviously just just capitalizing on the success of the original.

The first special, based on the 1960 book of the same name by George Seldon, was entitled “The Cricket in Times Square” and was released in April of 1973.  It followed a country cricket from Connecticut and his adventures in New York city along with a friendly cat and mouse as well as the newsstand-running family that adopted him.  The conceit was that he was able to mimic the music he heard on the radio and thus enraptured crowds who bought papers, helping out his adopted family, before he finally returned to the countryside.  The basic gist was that he brought music to the masses amid the hustle and bustle of the city.

This special was released later that same year with many of the same people behind it.  All of the voice actors returned and it was again again written and directed by Chuck Jones.  This, however, was an original story and not based on any existing material, for although there was a sequel published in 1969, “Tucker’s Countryside,” it has almost nothing in common with this special.  In many ways it’s actually the opposite as in that book Chester the cricket’s friends travel to help him instead of in this special where they bring him back to New York to help them.

The New York city portrayed here is very much the New York of the 1970’s, busy and noisy and dirty and above all unpleasant to such an extent that even cartoon shorthand easily brings this impression across.  The opening imagery is deliberately garish and jarring with snarling voices and honking horns and an effectively creepy animatronic Santa moving stiffly in a storefront window.  This is all meant to annoy the denizens of the nearby sewer, the aforementioned cat and mouse.  The cat begins to read aloud ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas’ which causes them both to contrast the household portrayed in the poem with the noisy humans above.  It seems to have been quite common in 70’s moralistic cartoons to use talking animals to portray humans as pretty lousy, I’m learning so much this month.  I must also point out how the cat occasionally turns to look directly into the camera as the mouse rants on and gravely says, “Right on.” 

They decide something must be done to ‘solve Christmas’ and the obvious course of action for both of them is to fetch their cricket friend from Connecticut and have him give another performance.  During this there’s a flashback to the first special and the contrast in art styles is relatively subtle but noticeable.  Both specials, up until the very end when they shift into being much more stylized, look like a typical Chuck Jones production of the time, if a bit more realistic than a contemporary Tom and Jerry cartoon, but the second special is noticeably looser and more ‘Chuck Jonesy’.  There’s some comic business with maps and relative distance and we’re suddenly on a train to the countryside.

The worldbuilding in these specials is so often confusing, there are often different levels of perceived reality between the talking animals and the humans and they often don’t bother to establish the distinctions.  As the cat and mouse arrive at their destination they’re greeted with a sign proclaiming the city the home of Chester, the world-famous musical cricket.  I am willing to believe that a musical cricket caused some local fuss in New York, maybe even made the papers.  But Chester left New York and went back to Connecticut of his own accord, so did he restart his musical pursuits back in town and they managed to connect his antics to those in New York and decide this must be the same cricket?  I admit it would be a coincidence if there were two of them.  None of that, however, answers the question of how they knew his name was Chester.

There are some unavoidable cartoon shenanigans in the town.  There is a local cat who wants to eat the visiting mouse and an angry dog that threatens the visiting cat.  For some reason the local cat can talk, the local dog cannot.  The cricket deals with both by playing music at them.  The dog is simply put to sleep with a lullaby, I’m willing to buy that cartoon logic, but how he deals with the cat is … odd.  While the cat is carrying off the visiting mouse the cricket comes up behind him and plays the melody to ‘Down by the Old Mill Stream.’  This causes the cat to somehow become convinced there are additional mice at a location down by an old mill stream, although as is shortly shown there is in fact such a location just down the road so fair enough, I guess.  This then causes the cat to toss away the mouse he already has as meager compared to the mice he has convinced himself he is about to get and trots away merrily towards said nearby old mill.  I can’t say I necessarily would have figured out a better way for a musical cricket to rescue a mouse from a cat but I like to think I would come up with a better song.

Upon returning to New York it is now Christmas Eve and the trio make their move.  The cricket hops up onto a fire hydrant and begins to play but is completely drowned out by the surrounding noise.  They begin to despair until suddenly there’s a massive power outage and the entire city is plunged into darkness.

I was slightly shocked at this plot twist, I thought this was a lot more troubling than it actually is after some quick checking.  The previous city-wide blackout of New York city had been in 1965, which also affected a great swathe of the Northeast US and parts of Canada.  The city was dark for around ten hours and generally speaking people reacted quite well, with relatively little unrest and a general spirit of togetherness.  What my brain remembered, however, was the blackout of 1977, which happened four years after this special aired and was the cause of widespread looting and crime.  In 1973 the prospect of a blackout was not as grim as it would later become.

Because of the blackout the city becomes quiet and Chester takes the opportunity to start playing ‘Silent Night.’  Needless to say, everyone within earshot is enraptured, and here’s where the special reaches beyond itself.  The art style shifts dramatically to show static shots of the surrounding listeners with exaggerated, almost grotesque poses and expressions.  It’s impressionistic in nature and the imagery is more like charcoal sketches or fevered oil paintings than the clean, traditional animation of the special up to this point.  People are gazing in awe, drawing close, lighting candles, and after a child’s voice joins the cricket’s music the shot draws in close on Chester as he plays.  He then dissolves into a shower of sparkles as sketches of disembodied faces flow towards the camera, one after another, the chorus joins in as well, a baby is apparently born, it segues to ‘Joy to the World,’ suddenly it’s colored church window iconography, the music swells, the crowd is now gazing upwards in wonder, and the only reason I know they weren’t all immediately raptured into heaven is that there was another Chester the Cricket special released in 1975.

The makers of ‘A Very Merry Cricket’ clearly realized they were onto a good thing with the first special and weren’t going to let a little thing like the story or characters having nothing at all to do with Christmas stop them from making a corresponding holiday special.  The entire conceit of the special is “Hey, remember that musical cricket?  Let’s have him do that again,” and the entire rest of the episode is killing time until that happens.  It’s Chuck Jones so of course the animation and comedic timing is very good, but it feels entirely inessential.  The script feels like it was done in a draft and a half and then they kicked it to the art department for a quick turnaround time.  It’s not an embarrassment or hard to sit through but it has entirely earned its slide into relative obscurity.