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Director: Charles Nichols
Release Date: March 4, 1949
Stars: Pluto
Rating: ★
Review:
In this cartoon Pluto inexplicably lives in a lodge in the mountains.
Here he receives a package that jumps. It shows to contain a little turtle. Pluto has a hard time delivering the mail and the turtle in his original package, but in the end it’s the turtle which delivers the letters.
This sweet and slow cartoon is the third starring the cute little turtle from ‘Canine Patrol‘ (1945) and ‘Pluto’s Housewarming‘ (1947). It uses the Pluto-befriends-a-little-animal-story formula of Pluto first being hostile to this new animal, then becoming friends, and it has a distinct routine feel to it. Clearly, this story formula was running out of steam badly. Luckily, ‘Pluto’s Surprise Package’ was the last Pluto cartoon using it.
This short’s best scene is when Pluto tries to retain three letters and the little turtle inside its package, troubled by wind and the turtle’s constant urge to move.
Watch ‘Pluto’s Surprise Package’ yourself and tell me what you think:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQL7KJoUJSI
This is Pluto cartoon No. 29
To the previous Pluto cartoon: Pueblo Pluto
To the next Pluto cartoon: Pluto’s Sweater
Director: Charles Nichols
Release Date: January 14, 1949
Stars: Mickey Mouse, Pluto
Rating: ★
Review:
In Pueblo Pluto” Mickey’s a tourist visiting a Pueblo village with Pluto.
Here, Pluto meets the small dog with the droopy eyes from ‘The Purloined Pup’ (1946), who tries to steal Pluto’s buffalo bone. When Pluto finally has his bone secured, he discovers he’s trapped inside a circle of cacti. Of course, it’s the little dog who saves him in this all too typical story.
Like the other Pluto-befriends-a-little-animal-cartoons, this short is as cute as it is dull. Its most interesting feature are the rather stylized backgrounds by Brice Mack, who has used a particularly large amount of pink.
Watch ‘Pueblo Pluto’ yourself and tell me what you think:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKGeaFPhxyo
This is Pluto cartoon No. 28
To the previous Pluto cartoon: Pluto’s Fledgling
To the next Pluto cartoon: Pluto’s Surprise Package
Director: Chuck Jones
Release Date: April 23, 1949
Stars: Claude Cat, Hubie and Bertie
Rating: ★★★★★ ♕
Review:
Mouse Wreckers’ is one of Chuck Jones’s all time classic cartoons.
Hubie and Bertie have found a new home, which unfortunately is inhabited by a prize-winning mouse chasing cat, Claude (in his debut). But Hubie and Bertie succeed to chase the cat out of the house by turning him into a nervous wreck. Hubie and Bertie angle themselves through the chimney to evoke the cat’s doom. After several gags, ending with one using an upside down room, the cat, who never knew what was going on, flees the house in horror, leaving it for Hubie and Bertie to roast marshmellows at the fire.
‘Mouse Wreckers’ features some minor stars from the Chuck Jones vault, but its character comedy is brilliant nonetheless. The character animation of Claude Cat trying to deal with his supposed hallucinations is wonderfully well done, and his steady decline into madness is both hilarious and chilling to watch.
Fifteen years later Chuck Jones and Michael Maltese would reuse this story idea in their Tom and Jerry cartoon ‘The Year of the Mouse’ (1965).
Watch ‘Mouse Wreckers’ yourself and tell me what you think:
Director: Art Davis
Release Date: October 21, 1949
Stars: Porky Pig
Rating: ★★½
Review:
Porky tries to get rid of an annoying mouse.
When it’s announced on the radio that brutal killer Bluebeard is in town, the mouse disguises as the criminal. Porky quickly discovers his disguise however, but then the real killer shows up, too. Porky faints on the spot, and is tight to a rocket and put under a guillotine. It’s the little mouse who saves the day by blowing up the killer, and in the end he’s allowed to stay in Porky’s house.
This story is not presented very logically, nor is it very well executed. Therefore, one doesn’t care for the characters, nor is it very funny. Art Davis definitely could do better, but unfortunately this was his last cartoon at Warner Brothers. He would not direct again until 1962, when he directed the Daffy Duck short ‘Quackodile Tears’. In the meantime Davis returned to animating, joining Friz Freleng’s unit.
Watch ‘Bye, Bye Bluebeard’ yourself and tell me what you think:
http://www.220.ro/desene-animate/10-Bye-Bye-Bluebeard/2Z9yE6bPnU/
This is Porky Pig cartoon no. 129
To the previous Porky Pig cartoon: Dough for the Do-Do
To the next Porky Pig cartoon: Boobs in the Woods
Director: Robert McKimson
Release Date: August 27, 1949
Stars: Bugs Bunny
Rating: ★★★★★
Review:
The three pigs sell their straw and wooden houses to Bugs Bunny, because they’ve read in a book what’s going to happen.
The wolf, who’s reading the same book, indeed blows both houses down, to much dismay of Bugs. Bugs revenges by dressing up like Red Riding Hood. This leads to hilarious sequences, including a perfectly executed light and staircase gag. In the end, Bugs helps the wolf blowing the pigs’ brick house down, by blowing it up.
‘The Windblown Hare’ is a nice example of a fairy tale mix-up cartoon, comparable to ‘The Big Bad Wolf‘ (1934), ‘The Bear’s Tale’ (1940) and ‘Swing Shift Cinderella’ (1945). It is hampered a little by large amounts of dialogue, but it still has plenty of silliness to laugh at.
Watch ‘The Windblown Hare’ yourself and tell me what you think:
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2nfts9
This is Bugs Bunny cartoon No. 64
To the previous Bugs Bunny cartoon: The Grey Hounded Hare
To the next Bugs Bunny cartoon: Frigid Hare
Director: Chuck Jones
Release Date: November 12, 1949
Stars: Pepe le Pew
Rating: ★★★★
Review:
‘For Scent-imental Reasons’ is the fourth Pepe Le Pew cartoon, and one of his best.
In this short a French perfume shop owner discovers Pepe le Pew in his shop and throws in his female cat to chase away our romantic skunk. Of course, she accidentally gets a white stripe on her back and she’s chased by the smelly Latin lover. But when Pepe accidentally falls into a barrel of blue paint, the tables are turned and he’s chased by the cat.
This short features an excellent scene of Pepe arguing with the cat through a glass window in silent pantomime.
Watch ‘For Scent-imental Reasons’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘For Scent-imental Reasons’ is available on the DVD set ‘Looney Tunes Golden Collection, Vol. 1’ and ‘Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Academy Awards Animation Collection: 15 winners’
Director: Chuck Jones
Release Date: October 7, 1949
Stars: Bugs Bunny
Rating: ★★½
Review:
On the way to Miami Beach Bugs misses a left turn at Albuquerque again and reaches the South Pole, where’s confronted with a little penguin chased by an Eskimo, who is as mean as he is out of place. Although Bugs wants to go to the beach, he saves the little fellow.
This is one of the weaker Bugs Bunny cartoons, mainly because of the rather inactive penguin, whose cuteness softens Bugs’s character and because of the large amount of dialogue, provided by Bugs alone. The short’s best scene is when Bugs dresses as a female Eskimo to rescue his waddling little friend. Jones would reuse the little penguin the next year in ‘8 Ball Bunny‘ with moderately better results.
Watch ‘Frigid Hare’ yourself and tell me what you think:
http://www.supercartoons.net/cartoon/663/bugs-bunny-frigid-hare.html
‘Frigid Hare’ is available on the DVD set ‘Looney Tunes Golden Collection, Vol. 1’
This is Bugs Bunny cartoon No. 65
To the previous Bugs Bunny cartoon: The Windblown Hare
To the next Bugs Bunny cartoon: Which is Witch?
Director: Chuck Jones
Release Date: September 16, 1949
Stars: Road Runner, Wile E. Coyote
Rating: ★★★★
Review:
‘Fast and Furry-ous’ is the very first Road Runner cartoon.
The short lays out the plan for all other Road Runner shorts, introducing the Road Runner, and the coyote, and their habitat: a desert canyon landscape covered by freeways. Like all following Road Runner cartoons it consists of blackout gags, involving mail orders, strange inventions, explosives, trucks, boulders and cliffs. It differs from the other Road Runner cartoons, however, in that only one of the products the Coyote purchases (the Superman suit) is made by ACME. It also features quite elaborate designs of Wile E. Coyote. In later cartoon his looks would become more streamlined.
Fast and Furry-ous is an excellent debut. It already contains a classic gag with the one in which the coyote constructs a ludicrous machine from a refrigerator, which produces snow to ski on. Unfortunately he runs out of snow when he’s skiing above a huge ravine…
‘Fast and Furry-ous’ introduces the excellent silent comedy of the Road Runner cartoons, second only to the Tom & Jerry series, and very welcome in an age in which animated shorts became more and more dialogue-driven.
Although we would call the series after the Road Runner, the speedy bird is essentially a one-dimensional character: being invincible, the Road Runner knows only one cheerful expression, and doesn’t do much more than running really, really fast and going ‘beep beep’.
The Coyote, on the other hand, is the best character ever conceived by Chuck Jones. Although he is the predator, in several shorts Jones goes at lengths to show he’s starving and desperate for food, making him more sympathetic. Moreover, the Coyote is an optimist, ever believing he will once triumph. He’s also a fanatic, not giving up despite all his mishaps. And he is an inventor, thinking of countless ways to catch the Road Runner. It is however his unfortunate doom to be confronted with bad luck no matter what he does. In Chuck Jones’s own words:
“In the Road Runner cartoons, we hoped to evoke sympathy for the Coyote. It is the basis of the series: the Coyote tries by any means to capture the Road Runner, ostensibly and at first to eat him, but this motive has become beclouded, and it has become, in my mind at least, a question of loss of dignity that forces him to continue. And who is the Coyote’s enemy? Why, the Coyote. The Road Runner has never touched him, never even startled him intentionally beyond coming up behind the Coyote occasionally and going “Beep-Beep!”. No, the only enemy the Coyote has is his overwhelming stubborness. Like all of us, at least some of the time, he persists in a course of action long after he has forgotten his original reasons for embarking on it.”
(from ‘Chuck Amuck’, page 219)
So when this wonderfully enthusiastic character looks to us for sympathy, when confronted by boulders, trucks, explosions or one of the immensely deep canyons of his homeland, he gains it, for we understand his frustrations and sympathize with him wholeheartedly.
These Oliver Hardy-like looks into the camera belong to the highlights of the series, and it is the silent comedy of the Coyote’s facial expressions that makes the Road Runner cartoons such fun to watch. Indeed, when given a voice, as in the Bugs Bunny cartoon ‘Operation Rabbit‘ (1952), the character becomes much less interesting; too pompous, too self-aware to gain the sympathy he would silently get. The four Bugs Bunny-Coyote combination shorts therefore never reach the comic success of the best of the Road Runner cartoons.
Watch ‘Fast and Furry-ous’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Fast and Furry-ous’ is available on the DVD set ‘Looney Tunes Golden Collection, Vol. 1’
Director: Robert McKimson
Release Date: October 14, 1949
Rating: ★★★★
Review:
At the San Juan Capistrano mission a cat is waiting for the swallows to return. Unfortunately, the swallows have sent a scout who is too clever for him.
This cartoon contains of several blackout gags, and, unusual for a Robert McKimson cartoon, practically no dialogue. Actually, the cartoon is reminiscent of the silent blackout gag comedy of the Road Runner series, which were introduced only one month earlier. ‘Swallow The Leader’ may be atypical for McKimson, it’s well-directed,with the gags coming in fast and well-timed.
The mission featured does really exists and is indeed famous for its nesting swallows. The cat is a typical McKimson design, and very reminiscent of the Supreem Cat in ‘Paying the Piper’ from earlier that year. Typically, he wears a collar, which makes him look like a forerunner of the standard Hanna-Barbera television studio design.
Director: Chuck Jones
Release Date: June 25, 1949
Stars: Bugs Bunny
Rating: ★★★★★
Review:
Bugs Bunny is singing nearby a villa, where a huge opera singer, called Giovanni Jones, is practicing.
The singer is heavily disturbed by Bugs’s performance and without arguing destroys our hero’s banjo, his harp and his tuba. Only then Bugs is prompted into war, which he reserves for the opera singer’s concert at the Hollywood Bowl.
What follows are great blackout gags featuring a string of opera tunes, with Bugs as ‘Leopold’ as a major highlight. This impersonation is an obvious reference to star conductor Leopold Stokowski, famous for conducting ‘Fantasia’ (1940). Bugs destroys the conductor’s baton, to direct with his hands only, like Stokowski does. From now on he controls the singer almost like a puppeteer. Bugs finally destroys his opponent by making him sing a ridiculously long high note, which tears the complete bowl down.
With cartoons like ‘Long-Haired Hare’ director Chuck Jones really came into his own: it shows Jones’ attitude to Bugs Bunny, who, in Jones’s cartoons, is only a misschief when provoked. Giovanni Jones is one of Bugs Bunny’s particularly large adversaries, following The Crusher (‘Rabbit Punch‘, 1948), and the warehouse manager in ‘Hare Conditioned‘ (1945).
‘Long-Haired Hare’ also shows Jones’ love for high culture, like opera. For instance, we can clearly detect a painting by Roussau le douanier decorating the opera singer’s villa. Jones’s love for opera would lead to two of his most famous and best cartoons, ‘The Rabbit of Seville‘ (1950) and ‘What’s Opera, doc?‘ (1958), which also feature Bugs Bunny.
In 1950, the Hollywood Bowl would be visited by cartoon characters again, when Tom & Jerry both tried to conduct in ‘Tom and Jerry in the Hollywood Bowl‘.
Watch ‘Long-Haired Hare’ yourself and tell me what you think:
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2fdnv1
This is Bugs Bunny cartoon No. 61
To the previous Bugs Bunny cartoon: Bowery Bugs
To the next Bugs Bunny cartoon: Knights Must Fall
Director: Friz Freleng
Release Date: April 30, 1949
Stars: Bugs Bunny, Yosemite Sam
Rating: ★★★★★ ♕
Review:
Bugs is presenting a vaudeville show in some western town.
Yosemite Sam especially visits his show to see the high diving Fearless Freep. Unfortunately, Freep is delayed by a storm and can’t come to perform. The disappointed Sam urges Bugs to take Freep’s place.
What follows is a masterful series of gags, which all end with Sam falling from the ridiculously high platform. At one point Freleng doesn’t even bother to point out how Bugs makes Sam take the plunge once again. As if it’s a natural law, Sam will fall anyway. Bugs, on the other hand, defies the law of the gravity. But you know, he tells us at the end, he never studied law…
Penned by storyman Tedd Pierce, this wonderfully hilarious cartoon takes a single idea from Freleng’s earlier ‘Stage Door Cartoon‘ (1944) and milks it brilliantly to a superb finale. Freleng’s timing rarely was so effective as in this cartoon, and it must rank among his all time best.
Watch ‘High Diving Hare’ yourself and tell me what you think:
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2bdtkf_bugs-bunny-ep-73-high-diving-hare_fun
‘High Diving Hare’ is available on the DVD set ‘Looney Tunes Golden Collection, Vol. 1’
This is Bugs Bunny cartoon No. 59
To the previous Bugs Bunny cartoon: Rebel Rabbit
To the next Bugs Bunny cartoon: Bowery Bugs
Dr. Grob's Animation Review 