Interesteg
What makes it different from others?
Beystiman
It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.
Glucedee
It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.
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.
Robert Reynolds
This is an early Silly Symphonies short produced by Disney. Even though there isn't that much to this, there will be spoilers ahead:This may be the template for a plot-less cartoon. There's no plot here, most of the gags are recycled and the animation is really the only thing to this cartoon.This short shows various types of birds moving to music. The best part from the first half of the short is a peacock strutting around, eventually spreading its plumage, only to get a raspberry from a little duck.The last three or so minutes of this attempts to inject some drama by having a chick taken from a farm by a predator bird. Another bird sees the chick get grabbed and calls out reinforcements. The birds get into a flying formation (a "Vee") and take off after the predator.They ultimately rescue the chick, which reunites with its mother hen by calling out, "Mammy!" and there's a happy ending.This short is available on the Disney Treasures Silly Symphonies DVD set. The set is worth tracking down.
Shawn Watson
There's not much story to this very early black-and-white cartoon. It's just more of an animation showcase featuring birds going about their business - singing, preening, paddling etc.One of the baby ducks even says "meep meep", long before Warner created the famous Roadrunner. A hawk (or vulture or something) swoops down to steal a chick for dinner, but as usual cartoons never portray the bloody carnage of real life so the bird eventually flies off with an empty tummy.The sound design and music give the short a little extra dimension, though other than that it is way to primitive to have any sort of lasting appeal.
TheLittleSongbird
I do enjoy the Silly Symphonies, having grown up with most of them, and I even would call some of them masterpieces. Birds of a Feather is not one of the masterpieces to me, but it isn't a piece of whatever either. For the first half of the cartoon the action is cute yet uneventful. The second half picks up the pace, and while not exceptional by all means there is signs of a story. I did like that in a sense, but in terms of the cartoon itself it was rather uneven, Birds of a Feather preferably should've been plot less the whole time or had a story throughout, two halves that had one or the other didn't completely mix for me. Some of the sequences of the first half are also rather slow-moving and basically just birds dancing and chirping to the music. However, the music is truly lovely, the birds are cute and the dancing while not much standout-worthy is well-choreographed. But the best asset was the animation, fluid and smooth with some very well done sequences, such as the opening part with the swans on the lake, the- different-bird-on-every-limb sequence, the birds flying in formation and dive bombing the hawk, how the peacock displays its feathers and the sophisticated idea of a group of baby chicks weave in and out of the mother hen's legs. Overall, nothing really special, but the animation and music are worth looking out for. 7/10 Bethany Cox
MartinHafer
This black & white Silly Symphony cartoon is exactly the sort of cartoon I completely hated as a child. Instead of edgy or funny characters, it was chock-full of cutesy animals--tons of sweet birds. In addition, it had LOTS of music--with the animals all swaying to the music. In other words, it was practically plot-less. Only later in the film when a clichéd 'evil' bird attacks is there any action, as the nice birds all band together to thwart evil. Sheesh! What a boring cartoon!! Although I adore early Disney cartoons, occasionally they came up with a lame one here or there...and this is certainly one of them. Unfortunately, this sort of saccharine was pretty popular with other cartoon makers in the 30s--particularly the Harmon-Ising cartoons. When I was a kid, they showed them on TV a lot and all my friends and I hated them. Fortunately, they have mostly been shelved in favor of better toons. Don't you and your kids deserve better? By the way, I noticed a score of 10 for this cartoon. While I totally respect the other reviewer's right to score it this high, they give 10s to all Disney cartoons. I, on the other hand, am more demanding and grouchy when it comes to these shorts. I've given a few 10s and 9s to some Silly Symphonies--so I am not impossible to please!