Category: Directed by Robert McKimson
-
Are all Speedy Gonzales cartoons the same? Cannery Woe opens with starving Mexican mice needing Speedy to get them cheese. Sylvester is guarding the cheese. Woe does have a couple minor differences though. First, none of the mice have to whore off their sisters to Speedy. Second, he doesn’t even show up until the cartoon’s…
-
Wild Wife is easily McKimson’s best cartoon (of those I’ve seen, anyway). I was going to start by talking about McKimson as an unlikely feminist, since Wife mostly concerns a housewife whose male chauvinist pig husband berates her for not getting enough done. The cartoon then flashes back to show exactly how full her day…
-
West of the Pesos is a hideous cartoon, with terrible animation and McKimson ripping off Wile E. Coyote and the Roadrunner. There’s not much to amuse oneself with during the insufferable six minute cartoon, but there are some places to try. First is the whole Speedy Gonsalez thing. I mean, Warner produced cartoons–not expensive, but…
-
A Broken Leghorn never confronts its bleakness or meanness. It opens with Foghorn Leghorn doing a good thing, tricking a presumably barren hen into thinking she laid an egg. But then it turns out to be a baby rooster, so Foghorn spends the rest of the cartoon trying to kill the adorable little rooster. Mel…
-
Expository dialogue in a cartoon? I’ve never heard anything so silly before… in A-Haunting We Will Go, the witch introduces Speedy Gonzales. Unfortunately, she does not cook him. Strangely (and sadly since the character dynamic is amusing), Daffy’s nephew doesn’t get an introduction. The stuff with Daffy and his nephew isn’t bad–and the animation on…
-
The Windblown Hare is fairly intolerable. Even if the animation wasn’t lazy–maybe Warner slashed the budget after finding out what McKimson wanted to do–there are still two and a half major problems. First, and most surprisingly, Mel Blanc’s Three Little Pigs voices are terrible. He’s doing them as Cagney toughs and it flops. Next, the…
-
A prerequisite for The Mouse That Jack Built is probably working knowledge of “The Jack Benny Program.” I have none, though I think I’ve heard the radio show before. But I certainly do not remember it enough for Mouse to make sense. It’s a strange concept for a cartoon–imagine Jack Benny is a cartoon mouse;…
-
So all you need to make Daffy Duck an incredibly sympathetic character is Porky Pig. In Daffy Duck Slept Here, Porky’s a traveler in search of a hotel room. He ends up lodging with Daffy, only they haven’t met yet. Once they do, the majority of the hilarity ensues. And it is hilarity. Slept Here…
-
I’m sorry, I think I missed something… did Bugs Bunny just kill the Easter Bunny? Or did he just maim him? Easter Yeggs ought to be a lot better. It’s got an Easter Bunny who conspires to get out of his duties on an annual basis by acting emo, it’s got Elmer Fudd and it’s…
The Stop Button 