Huievest Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

KnotStronger This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

Kimball Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Darin One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

tavm Just rewatched this Merrie Melodies cartoon on the Varsity Show DVD. It has the characters on the book covers in a big shelf full of them coming to life, often in the caricatures of the film actors that portrayed them. It also had some black characters portrayed with big lips which is considered offensive today so kudos to Warner Bros. for including a disclaimer to that effect. Quite musically pleasing and a bit funny in some scenes concerning the film stars being drawn. Frank Tashlin was one of the most creative animation directors at the time and he's done well with something like this. So on that note, I recommend Have You Got Any Castles?

Lee Eisenberg One of the first things that I noticed about "Have You Got Any Castles?" was the racist portrayals of certain characters (Fu Manchu, Uncle Tom's Cabin). Other than that, it was a pretty neat entry in the "books come alive" genre. A previous reviewer noted that most of the books portrayed in this cartoon are books that had recently been turned into movies when the cartoon came out, and the characters in the books resemble the actors from their respective movies (Charles Laughton in "Mutiny on the Bounty", Victor McLaglen in "The Informer", etc). It was probably intended to appeal more to the movie-going audience than to bookworms. But of course, isn't it easier just to watch the movie than to read the book? Thinking about this cartoon in its historical context, I can't help but imagine what it would look like nowadays. Many of the novels portrayed would be pretty grim (e.g., anything by Stephen King), and there might be a number of political books, cookbooks, self-help books and foreign language dictionaries. Out of "The Shining", Jack Nicholson would chop a hole in a door and say "Here's Johnny!"; out of the James Bond novels, Sean Connery would bed the world's hottest babes; and then there would be Noam Chomsky's various books about US-foreign policy. Go figure! Anyway, it's a cartoon worth seeing. So is "Book Revue", starring Daffy Duck.

Mathieu Lefebvre If cartoon characters can interact with each other in "Who Framed Roger Rabbit", why not literary characters? Instead of producing another wacky cartoon about Bugs Bunny, Tweety or another silly character, Merry Melodies did a wise move in crafting a musical/short story about book characters.Opening with a dance number with Mr. Hyde, Fu Man Chu, the Phantom of the Opera and Frankenstein, it next moves to Green Pastures, Old King Cole, Louis Pasteur, Mutiny on the Bounty, Heidi etc. etc.But the interaction is also interesting. For example, Thin Man becomes fat after visiting a cook book, Rip Van Winkle tries to prevent himself from hearing Old King Cole...After that, a plot develops: the Three Musketeers steal the 7 keys to Baldpate in order to free the Prisoner of Zenda. They are instantly chased and they have to flee from the cannons of the Light Brigade, Robinson Crusoe and All Quiet on the Western Front. Ultimately, Rip Van Winkle blows everybody with a Hurricane and it's all Gone With the Wind...I can't stop myself from watching it, because it's simply a highly imaginative and entertaining musical story and it's funnier than some Disney and Looney Tunes cartoons. I (disappointingly) think that it's the kind of story that we won't find in today's children's videos and for a long time, if it's not for ever. It's desolating, because it's some great stuff.

Robert Reynolds There's a great deal to say about this short and some detail is necessary, so spoilers are ahead.This short is an excellent example of a type of cartoon that Warner Brothers did very effectively: Characters from books and/or magazines coming to life or being used as part of a sight gag. Generally set in a bookstore, the first done was Three's a Crowd, done in 1933.Castles originally featured a caricature of Alexander Wollcott doing an opening and a close as the "Town Crier", but the studio heads were afraid Wollcott might take offense and the framing sequences were removed. Caricatures were a staple of animation by this point and Castles features a number of them.Why did the animators do these type of cartoons? I suspect it was because it gave them the advantage of using material that would be very familiar to the audience on at least two levels: books that were familiar to a fairly well-read public (or magazine titles familiar to that same public) as well as a visual connection, given that many of these books had also been made into films. Given that animation is a very visual medium by it's nature, audience familiarity with titles and faces allowed the animators to fire dozens of short sight gags at the audience in a short time-frame. Audience recognition of W.C Fields or Greta Garbo, coupled with wide familiarity with books like So Red the Rose and So Big makes the gags work in different ways for different viewers. They did these for the same reason books were adapted into films: audience familiarity with the subject matter. Studios routinely optioned film rights to best-selling books on the not unsound theory that someone who read the book and liked it would pay to see a film version as well. Back in the 1930s, the four principle forms of entertainment were radio, movies, reading and music. Cartoons strip-mined all four for material and Warner's did this superbly. They even re-used themselves on occasion, including a bit in Castles that was first used in Clean Pastures and is used here ("Swing For Sale").This short is in print on Looney Tunes Golden Collection, Vol. 2, with the original Wollcott framing sequences included. Highly recommended.