Bubble Bee

Bubble Bee is a short about a dog chewing gum.  Let that sink in for minute, and you’ll understand why I was not a huge fan of this Pluto adventure.  Pluto fighting against another dog, or against other animals?  That’s mildly entertaining.  Pluto fighting against himself trying to chew gum?  Hand me a pillow, because I’m going to fall asleep.

Where to begin?  First, there is the rather silly idea that Pluto is just dying to get himself a piece of gum from a gumball machine.  I don’t know how that makes sense, because I’m not a dog owner, but I have not seen many dogs pursuing a ton of gum.  Nevertheless, when Pluto walks by a gumball machine, you’d think he had never seen anything so enticing in all his life.

On top of that, his inability to get into the gumball machine to claim his prize causes great frustration.  That frustration is only compounded by a bumble bee that takes off into the machine and comes out with a piece of gum.  Following the bee to its hive, Pluto finds the hive is stuffed with gumballs which he proceeds to extract and eat.  This would have been the perfect spot for a nice gag with bees attacking him, but no, we get a dog chewing gum.

Indeed, that is the next 90 seconds of this 7 minute short.  You heard me.  That much time is dedicated to watching Pluto chew gum.  Sure, there are some gags with the bubbles and how he blows them, but for the most part, it’s coming up with interesting ways to show Pluto chewing gum.  The bee gets involved looking for revenge, and uses the gum to tie Pluto in knots. 

If any of this sounds appealing to you, then you should go and watch this short.  I think you can tell that it does not appeal to me.  There was no flow to the short and no story for me to latch on to in order to keep going through the gum chewing.  I don’t know what the animation team had much to work with in this instance, or if the story team took the week off, but Bubble Bee was definitely a subpar story.