Cartoongate!

• Author: Rothenberg, Robert S.

Kino on Video / 55 minutes / $14.95

Over the years, many politicians have been accused of being cartoonish. This compilation of animated short subjects proves the point, particularly apropos as we come down the stretch of the latest race for the White House. Ten shorts from 1944 to 1996 lampoon various presidents and would-be chief executives, the latter group including Popeye and his perpetual nemesis, Bluto. En route, viewers get a distinctly biased working over of Dwight Eisenhower's "I Like Ike" campaign and Jimmy Carter's sudden appearance on the political scene, with a montage of caricatures, mostly playing off the peanut image, invariably with a huge bucktoothed grin.

Ronald Reagan is pilloried as a Pinocchio-clone whose nose keeps growing as he tries to explain away his policies on Central America, the economy, Lebanon, the Soviet Union, and nuclear warfare, culminating in his now-monstrous nose blasting off as a missile and detonating into a mushroom cloud. In another brief spot, Richard...