I look at early Pixar shorts as first experiments with a new technology, and then I look at this, an early experiment with stop-motion animation made about three quarters of a century earlier. It is in terms of the utilization of a new form at the service of actually substantial content (rather than inane kitsch), that Wladyslaw Starewicz's The Cameraman's Revenge is spectacularly superior. But it is also visually prettier.

timeless

Arresting visually and with a smart plot, but it has aged poorly and should have been shorter.

Way ahead of its time. It's a cynical, funny, legitimate SHORT STORY about unfaithful insects. The difference is, this one is conveyed through animation, not words. Like all movies from that period, it gets a significant bump up in score for being so old. However, unlike most silent films, it is still amusing to this very day.

A technical miracle, this story of infidelities and love between beetles is so beautifully crafted that you just can't resist it.

Like with other certain silent films, there either needs to be more dialogue or, better yet, a more successful telling of the story through images and sound. Not to say that this film isn't entirely unsuccessful (the cinematography is quite important with this one), it's just that it's quite difficult to show emotions when your actors are actually dead insects.

Very impressive stop motion.

Elsewhere insects direct movies about the infidelity of human corpses.

Stop motion insects who cheat on each other and take revenge via movie camera. Beautiful.

Beautiful stop-motion, but a bit dull to watch.

Incredible animation, considering the time, but still old hat, and kinda silly

Ha, so funny.

A nice tale of infidelity with cute insect animation.

Great

Wheee, bug porn.

It's aged exceptionally well, bu I'd say its greatest achievement is being cute and charming despite the cast consisting entirely of dead bugs.

Morality tale with awesome and trendsetting stop-motion animation.

Certainly ahead of its time, and it holds up well.

It's drags a little but is a fine wee film, as charming as almost any early cinema short. A beetle wears a hat! And one drives a motorcycle! It's impossible not to smile at dead insect corpses, whodathunkit!?

Stop-motion animation is basically the shit. This being an almost one hundred years old film it unsurprisingly shows its age visually, but the content could be identical and still work just as well if it were made today. The animation is very charming, and not as crude as you might expect.

I think we all learned an important lesson here: if you're going to cheat on your beetle wife, do not do it around any grasshoppers, because they will catch it on film, have sex with your wife and then display said film in front of your wife. Grasshoppers are sick, sick bastards.

Fatal flaw in the direction cost it a good 10 points: the Grasshopper did not film Mr Beetle from that direction. You were so close to perfection, Starewicz. So close.

Charming and clever film involving domestic troubles between animated insects. Quality of the print aside, the animation holds up extremely well, and is mighty impressive for 1912.