In 1961, the animation team at Paramount Pictures created the character of Kozmo, a little Martian boy who comes to Earth and creates comic disruptions. Unfortunately, the first two entries in the Kozmo series, “The Kid from Mars” and “Kozmo Goes to School,” were dismally unfunny and the character was dropped.
Director/producer Seymour Kneitel sought to revive Kozmo in a new short called “Space Kid,” but he died in 1964 before finishing the work. Several of Kneitel’s colleagues – including Howard Post and Shamus Culhane – finished the short for a 1966 release, crediting Kneitel posthumously while declining screen credit. The resulting film was infinitely superior to the two entries that came before it.
“Space Kid” opens with Kozmo creating a toy rocket in his home that winds up destroying an antique decoration. Kozmo’s mother tells him to go play in space, so he uses his jet pack to fly from Mars to a city on Earth. (In the earlier Kozmo cartoons, he traveled by flying saucer.)
While wandering the city, Kozmo notices a woman in an apartment watering a plant on her windowsill. Kozmo aims his ray gun at the plant to help spur its growth, but it blossoms into a tree. He then encounters a woman with a baby carriage who asks him to watch her infant while she takes care of some shopping. The fact that Kozmo is green-skinned and wears a glass helmet doesn’t seem to bother the woman.
Kozmo takes his new job very serious, standing watch next to the carriage with folded arms and the most serious expression he can muster. When the baby in the carriage begins to cry, Kozmo uses his ray gun to elevate the carriage, which he begins to rock while the antenna on his helmet transmits a lullaby. The baby is pacified into sleep and Kozmo is pleased.
However, the intrusive noises of the city threaten to awaken the infant, so Kozmo uses his ray gun to eliminate those audio assaults. He turns a policeman’s whistle into a benign New Year’s noisemaker, he creates a large hole to swallow up a construction worker with a jackhammer, and he makes a fire engine disappear while its firemen passengers go riding off in the air. The baby’s mother returns and rewards Kozmo with a lollipop, which he happily licks as he flies back to Mars.
“Space Kid” is one of the cutest and sweetest theatrical cartoon releases of the 1960s. It never generates rolling-on-the-floor laughter, but it provides a feel-good vibe as the helpful little Martian does a good deed, albeit in a peculiar way. The flat, UPA-style limited animation works perfectly in framing this delightfully offbeat fable, and Kozmo comes across as a lovable being blessed with multiple emotions.
Sadly, Paramount would shut down its theatrical animation operations the year after “Space Kid” was released, and this cartoon might have been lost to obscurity except for the good fortune of having a clip featured in Walter Hill’s popular 1982 comedy “48 HRS.” For years, people unfamiliar with Kozmo wondered about the cartoon in the movie – thanks to the Internet, the film has been easily identified and can be shared with new generations.