The movie is not especially handsome, with animation that has the flat, sparse look and jerky momentum of a Saturday-morning cartoon.

Entertainment Weekly called it "a punch-drunk, derivative Saturday-morning cartoon" that "saps every atom of magic from its source".

However, Valerie was the very first female African-American cast member on a regular Saturday-morning cartoon.

If Saturday-morning cartoons have worn you down, watch this.

The next day, she turned on Saturday-morning cartoons, as if she'd decided to be a kid again.

"Sky Blue" teeters unsteadily between dystopian fable and Saturday-morning cartoon.

Saturday-morning cartoons have done their work in shifting the idea of comedy away from human beings and indeed from humanity altogether.

All eight of the shorts offer a lot more visual pizzazz than Saturday-morning cartoons on television, but only two of the eight begin to transcend the genre.

Right in the middle, it turns into a frenetic, nerve-jangling Saturday-morning cartoon before finally subsiding into a mood of pastoral whimsy.

"Mannequin," which opens today at the National and other theaters, starts with an animated credit sequence that looks suspiciously like a Saturday-morning cartoon.