Fun in Balloon Land
"This movie is a whole lot of fucking nope!"
— The Cinema Snob
| Fun in Balloon Land | ||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 "Even Old Mr. Walrus is Cryin"
| ||||||||||||||||
|
Fun in Balloon Land is an obscure 1965 American fantasy musical "film" apparently created by a balloon parade company Giant Balloon Parades, Inc. (the film is so obscure that there is no credited director or actors even on IMDb) for kid matinees.
The film can honestly be described as The Oogieloves in the Big Balloon Adventure if it was made in the 1960s, had an even lower budget, and have absolutely no storytelling whatsoever. The film has an incredibly low score of 1.3 out of 10 on IMDb.
"Plot"
The film begins with a song about the supposed joys and wonders of Balloon Land; then the film really starts with a little boy named Sonny sitting on his mother's lap as she reads him a bedtime story. They both soon fall asleep, and Sonny has a dream of entering the titular Balloon Land, where he finds other kids who are also there, apparently under a curse that causes them to fall asleep. The only way to wake them is to have the prince balloon kiss the princess balloon. As they kiss, the kids wake up and get to experience ballerinas dancing around them.
Later, Sonny goes under the sea to meet the king of the sea, who invites Sonny to come to his palace. He accepts, and soon he's having fun playing tag with the undersea creatures. After that, Sonny plays the role of a cowboy trying to stop robbers from escaping. As soon as he fires his pretend gun, the screen fades to black, and then the film stops being about Balloon Land as it resorts to using stock footage of the 45th annual Gimbel's Thanksgiving Day Parade (now known as the 6abc Dunkin' Donuts Thanksgiving Day Parade, with the Philadelphia-based parade predating the Macy's parade by four years) and takes up 40 minutes of the remaining 52-minute runtime.
In the parade, a narrator (or local citizen from the city; it's hard to tell because no one is credited in this film) tells us what each balloon is and comes up with a story for each of them. As soon as it ends, the film returns to Balloon Land with Sonny returning to his mother.
But wait! The film is still not over yet, as they decided to pad out the running time by including a game of remembering the names of the balloon characters and the narrator decides to also include a game of encouraging the kids to participate in the film by doing what the narrator says to do. After all that, the film finally ends with the text "The End" followed by the film's theme song being sung again, this time in the past tense.
Why This "Film" Is Not Fun
- It barely even qualifies as a film because it uses stock footage of a 1965 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania balloon parade to pad out the running time as it takes up about 77% of the film, hence why we put "film" under quotations.
- The story is supposed to be about Sonny, the boy who falls asleep while sitting on his mother's lap while listening to a bedtime story. But due to incompetent storytelling, it is rendered incoherent and practically nonexistent.
- Horrible acting from all actors, even by low-budget movies' standards.
- Horrid songs: The opening song alone is so badly and creepily sung to the point that it is enough to cause nightmares. It's even worse in the ending because it is sung in the past tense.
- The special effects are terrible even by 1960s standards; none of the balloon characters has animated mouths that make them look like they are talking, so the company makes them appear static and are obviously moved around by the film crew.
- Speaking of the balloons talking, whenever they do, it's obviously someone off the camera who does a bored-sounding voice for them.
- It also could get incredibly confusing when the balloons are talking, because the balloons have no lip movement, and the viewer won't know which one is talking, especially when there are other balloon characters in the same scene.
- The narrator sounds so bored and unenthusiastic that it's not hard for the viewer to fall asleep. (most of the time anyway; when she does get excited about a certain balloon, she sounds way too enthusiastic)
- Pretty much like the Oogieloves (unlike this film, however, the Oogieloves interact with the audience throughout the whole film), the film decides at the end to include 2 games of guessing the balloon character and interacting with the audience to do what the narrator asks them to do, only it's less effective because of the bored-sounding narrator.
- In the intro and outro, a lot of the words in the lyrics are capitalized for no reason.
- The Indian balloons are portrayed as racist stereotypes of Native Americans.
- There are also some inappropriate moments, like for an example, before the parade, a kid shoots a fake gun, which may be a bad influence on the target audience.
- There is a good amount of sexism found here, like when the narrator was talking about the elephant balloons, "only the females and their children can preform, the males are too rebellious", but what if the male baby elephants are banned for being rebellious?
- Homophobia: The narrator would also use the word "gay" to describe balloons that look happy, which although acceptable in the time it came out, it's completely unacceptable today since using it in that context is offensive to the LGBTQ+ community.
Fun Qualities
- Some of the balloons have decent-looking designs.
- A few of them, including the two-headed cat balloon, even look rather cute.
- The narrator sounds so bad and tired that she can sound hilarious at times.
Trivia
- The entire film was initially registered as the identifier LP32099 on the copyright catalogues in 1966 and will not be expired until the first day of January 2061, 95 years after published with a notice; however, most people (and companies) list this as public domain, because Giant Balloon Parades, Inc. is long gone.[1]
- The MPAA (now as the MPA) didn't evaluate the film for approval, which means it doesn't have the MPAA number on the title card.
Videos
Trailer
Movie
Review
References
- ↑ Library of Congress, Copyright Office (1966), Catalog of Copyright Entries: Motion Pictures and Filmstrips (Parts 12-13), Wikimedia Commons.