You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘Speedy Gonzales’ tag.
Director: Robert McKimson
Release Date: January 7, 1961
Stars: Speedy Gonzales, Sylvester
Rating: ★★
Review:
‘Cannery Woe’ centers on Manuel and José, two poor mice, who live at the beach and who are starving.
They really would like to join the Grand Cheese Fiesta, organised by the mouse mayor for his re-election, but they are thrown out. Yet, the mayor has more problems: there’s no cheese at the fiesta (‘something new is added to the store’, explains one of the cheese committee mice). Luckily, José is friends with Speedy Gonzales, and only has to whistle to get Speedy’s help.
Speedy fetches the cheese from the store, unhindered by guarding cat Sylvester, who only gets hindered by his own tacks, mousetraps and cannon. In the end, José and Manuel are awarded as cheese inspectors, but Speedy gets even a better job as ‘chick inspector’.
‘Cannery Woe’ is a very mediocre cartoon with rather run of the mill gags. In fact, the mice José and Manuel are more interesting than anything that follows, and one wonders why storyman Tedd Pierce and director Robert McKimson didn’t devote more of the cartoon to them.
Watch ‘Cannery Woe’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Cannery Woe’ is available on the DVD-set ‘Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume Four’
Director: Robert McKimson
Release Date: January 23, 1960
Stars: Speedy Gonzales, Sylvester
Rating: ★★★
Review:
The setting of ‘West of the Pesos’ is a ‘veelage’, where several mice have been caught and put into cages inside the ‘ACME Laboratorio por experimentao’, guarded by Sylvester.
The remaining mice of the village would gladly rescue their comrades, so Speedy Gonzales is lured by the beautiful female mouse Camilla to come to the rescue. As the gags come fast and plenty, this is one of the more satisfying Speedy Gonzales cartoons, if hardly really funny. This time, Sylvester doesn’t stand a chance, and isn’t even given time to think of some counter measures.
Despite all the action, the main attractions of this cartoon are the attractive and strikingly modern backgrounds by Robert Givens and William Butler. The list of mice caught for the laboratory includes the names of animators Rudy Zamora, Manuel Perez and Gus Arriola, as well as painter Pablo Picasso.
Watch ‘West of the Pesos’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘West of the Pesos’ is available on the DVD-set ‘Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume Four’
Director: Friz Freleng
Release Date: August 29, 1959
Stars: Speedy Gonzales, Sylvester
Rating: ★★
Review:
‘Here Today, Gone Tamale’ starts with a cheese famine in a harbor village.
But then a ship called ‘Dutch Treat’ arrives, full of cheese. Unfortunately, the ship is protected by Sylvester, but the starved mice get Speedy Gonzales (he knows one’s sister – let me correct this – he knows everybody’s sister) to get the cheese. In some blackout gags Sylvester does his best to catch Speedy Gonzales, e.g. with a large mallet and a guillotine. In the end, Sylvester has to admit defeat, and adding ‘if you can’t beat them, join them’, he puts on some Mickey Mouse-club-like mouse ears and joins some dancing mice.
The best gag is when Speedy Gonzales locks Sylvester inside a storage room full of Limburger cheese, but otherwise there’s not too much to enjoy in ‘Here Today, Gone Tamale’ and one has ample time to enjoy the functional layouts by Hawley Pratt, beautifully painted by Tom O’Loughlin.
Watch the opening of ‘Here Today, Gone Tamale’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Here Today, Gone Tamale’ is available on the DVD-set ‘Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume Four’
Director: Robert McKimson
Release Date: January 18, 1958
Stars: Speedy Gonzales
Rating: ★★½
Review:
‘Tortilla Flaps’ is a Speedy Gonzales cartoon featuring a vulture as Speedy’s adversary.
The cartoon takes place during Cinco de Mayo. The mice are having their own little festival, where Speedy plays tennis with himself as an attraction at the fair. When the vulture threatens the festival, Speedy Gonzales takes care of him. Soon the vulture surrenders and he ends as an attraction at the fair himself.
‘Tortilla Flaps’ is one of the weaker Speedy Gonzales cartoons: the vulture is a poor substitution for Sylvester, and none of the chase gags are very funny. The best gag arguably is when Speedy makes the bird stop for a passing train, but the bird doesn’t make it in time…
Watch ‘Tortilla Flaps’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Tortilla Flaps’ is available on the DVD-set ‘Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume Four’
Director: Friz Freleng
Release Date: July 4, 1959
Stars: Speedy Gonzales
Rating: ★★★★
Review:
In ‘Mexicali Shmoes’, Speedy Gonzales’s usual adversary Sylvester is replaced by a couple of slow dumb Mexican cats called Manuel and José.
When Manuel does an ill-fated attempt to catch Speedy, José tells him you need brains to catch the little mouse. As José provides the brains, the two immediately set out to catch the rapid rodent. What follows are some blackout gags, the best of which features a street full of landmines.
Writer Warren Foster saves the best gag for the finale: tired of trying to catch the fastest mouse in all Mexico, Manuel suggests they should try to catch Slowpoke Rodriguez, the slowest mouse in all Mexico. José immediately rushes away to do so, but Manuel still has to tell him something important about Slowpoke…
‘Mexicali Shmoes’ is no all-time classic, but it must be the funniest of all Speedy Gonzales films, thanks to the interplay between the two cats. Because of their characterization, the film actually works. Manuel may clearly be the dumber of the two, José fares hardly better, and is equally hilarious to watch. Speedy Gonzales, on the other hand, is as bland as ever, and only speaks during the opening scene. All the more a pity that the two cats weren’t used again.
Watch ‘Mexicali Shmoes’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Mexicali Shmoes’ is available on the Blu-Ray set ‘Looney Tunes Platinum Collection: Volume 2’ and on the DVD-set ‘Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume Four’
Directors: Tony Benedict, Gerry Chiniquy, Art Davis, David Detiege & Friz Freleng
Airing Date: April 1, 1980
Stars: Daffy Duck, Foghorn Leghorn, Miss Prissy, Sylvester, Speedy Gonzales
Rating: ★
Review:
‘Daffy Duck’s Easter Egg-Citement’ is an Easter-themed Looney Tunes television special produced by DePatie-Freleng.
Unlike Chuck Jones in ‘Bugs Bunny in King Arthur’s Court‘ Friz Freleng doesn’t attempt to tell one long story in the 25 minutes he’s got. Instead, we have three: the first evolves around Miss Prissy, who, in Foghorn Leghorn’s egg farm, lays a golden egg. Daffy and Sylvester find it, and fight eachother for it. This episode contains the only fine piece of animation of the whole special: the depiction of a paranoid Daffy in a car.
In the second episode Daffy is a guard at a chocolate bunny factory, protecting it against Speedy Gonzales, and in the third Daffy tries to go south, trying several options, including a horse. This part reuses the horse from the Pink Panther cartoon ‘Pinto Pink’ (1967) and some of its gags, too.
These stories are framed with Daffy in a very ‘Duck Amuck‘-like setting. Like ‘Bugs Bunny in King Arthur’s Court’ ‘Daffy Duck’s Easter Egg-citement’ suffers from bad designs (especially Foghorn Leghorn, who’s not a Freleng character, is badly drawn), can music, slow timing and excessive dialogue.
Director: Robert McKimson
Release Date: July 20, 1957
Stars: Speedy Gonzales
Rating: ★★★★
Review:
It was Robert McKimson, not Friz Freleng, who directed the first Speedy Gonzales film ‘Cat-Tails for Two’. But it took four years before McKimson revisited this character.
By then Friz Freleng had redesigned McKimson’s creation in ‘Speedy Gonzales’, which had won an Academy Award.
McKimson’s returns to Speedy Gonzales actually results in one of Speedy’s finest films. Here Speedy tries to protect two drunken mice called Pablo and Fernando from a large grey cat. ‘Tabasco Road’ is a very talkative cartoon, but it’s also inspired and charming, especially because of the characters of Pablo and Fernando, who are as intoxicating as they are intoxicated. The best gag, however, is when Speedy’s action appears too fast for the viewer, and Speedy replays it for us in slow motion.
Watch ‘Tabasco Road’ yourself and tell me what you think:
Dr. Grob's Animation Review 