SIR ANDREW

Wordlessly, self-satisfiedly, hilariously (remember The Bear and the Fly?), a donkey showers, dries and powders himself; polishes his hooves; dons shirt and selects suit; puzzles over hat (atop ears? ears tied under? no, earholes cut for ears to stick through!); and then sashays forth, peering at himself in every reflecting glass that he passes. So--you can see it coming--he tumbles through an open stairway-door in the sidewalk; is carted off to the hospital (see Sir Andrew on a stretcher, in the ambulance, in his hospital bed); and emerges with a bandaged foot and a crutch. Then his beloved hat blows off and he recklessly chases it, leaving a trail of mayhem--an auto accident, a spilled painter--of which he's blithely unaware. And when last seen, he's admiring himself in a store window again . . . and about to slip on a banana peel. The mishaps hark back to ancient comic strips and one-reelers--but their very durability is a plus here, where they're integrated with strong characterization (Sir Andrew is, from frame two, an unmistakable toff) and a depiction of daily life that's sometimes incidentally amusing (a cat advancing upon a goldfish bowl), more often plain absorbing--like the whole hospital sequence, something kids of picture-book age almost never get to see. A complete success, then, and worth looking at over and over.