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Rating: 5/7

The sublime genius of this plot has yet to be met: Pig with an eating disorder stealing other people's food dreams he is overfed by a mad scientist and explodes, wakes up and continues to overeat, summing up one of mankind's most fundamental flaws. The character designs and animation are basic but they get the job done, and that cutting from the children skipping along to his running past them is a most extreme way of setting up his embarassingly frenzied meal.

Other classic moments include his prayer, his thoughts before nodding off, and the entire lab sequence. The absurdity of a mad scientist taking glee at overstuffing the fatso makes those elaborate mechanisms for feeding him all the more frightening, almost like bondage with real psychological weight behind it. Even though you'll see his grab for the turkey leg a mile away, the sight of him almost walking away makes it satisfying.

This is one of the few cartoons with a worthwhile story where every scene works toward developing it. Even the cross-fading that reuses footage, a device I normally don't like, doesn't feel out of place here. If only the designs weren't so generic.

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Makes fun of the Civil War and the south using a blue-blooded (and blue-skinned) colonial and his southern belle daughter (who unfortunately doesn't look like a real bell - this isn't by Tex, you know) who falls for Elmer Fudd (still using Egghead's design), a soldier who goes and joins some other soliders that apathetically march through screen after screen whether it's walking to a war zone or walking in a war zone and hiding in their backpacks. You probably didn't know that cotton pickers used lawnmowers and that slaves also validated parking tickets, but you do now.

The gags all take a backseat to Elmer and what's-her-name, but there are some funny ones. Like the caricature of some celebrity, the one who does the rapidfire girlish giggle and 'Stonewall Jackson' shaking his head and slurring through his cheeks a bunch of comparisons between war and baseball. The northern soldiers have to wear union suits and go through union and protest things that are unfair to the union and otherwise unionize.

But after laughing at the gags, it seems like they happen just to resolve the romantic subplot, itself a funny gag, but something's nagging at me. I almost wish they had invented some new characters for this cartoon instead of subverting it to Egghead's quirkiness, not to mention interrupting the action to remind you that his babe is still waiting for him. Some more slave gags would have been great. On a positive note, the birds settling inside the canon is the most touching 2 seconds I've ever seen in a war-parody cartoon.

Rating: 6/7

It may not be ground-breaking as WB cartoons go, but this consolidates their knack for character-design (Elmer Fudd), celebrity caricaturing (Edna Mae Oliver and Hugh Herbert ), and satirical readings of old popular culture (in this case a poem called "The Courtship of Miles Standish") with lots of outrageous cartoon screwiness. Oh, and have I read the poem? Maybe later (I just now found out about it by Googling "Miles Standish").

Most of the action comes from an Indian raid merging visual slapstick with character development as only a Warner Bros. director could deliver (Oliver braves a sling of arrows to accomplish a most mundane task and hands Elmer a new hat for every one shot off). Even the Indians' personalities aren't entirely cliched (there is a dumb-looking Indian with buck-teeth for example who at least doesn't have the Barney Rubble voice). The gag closing the flashback is a stroke of genius (the Indians break an international rule of warfare that forces them to retreat even though they're practically winning) and the plot twist at the end, while somewhat predictable, manages to turn the poem upside-down.

The scenes leading up to the Indian battle are no slouch either, due to the characterization of Hugh who is flawlessly integrated into the plot and not just a caricature (and this plot is pretty darn mature and well-developed for a satirical film if I may say so). You may remember how he'd put his hands together, squint, and do a high-pitched clownish giggle in Speaking of the Weather but his bashfulness, meticulousness and horniness makes work well beyond a one note gag. And now for the obligatory closing remark: This is an underlooked gem!

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A W.C. Fields knock-off guides a tour of an abandoned drug store on a cablecar-like basket and fights for breathing space with a chatter-box who by some miracle isn't as annoying as Sniffles. It's mostly an excuse to display a lot of ridiculous puns (smelling salts, shaving brush, vanishing cream, crazy mineral water), some of which are pointed out by W.C. and others left to speak for themselves. It's a repetitive cartoon but some of these puns are funny.

Rating: 4/7

Most of the time I can enjoy even WB cartoons that rely heavily on celebrity caricatures (Tex Avery’s Hollywood Steps Out is an example), but it usually helps to come up with a good gag and match it to the supposed personality of the celebrity being roasted. There are only a couple of gags in Malibu Beach Party that really do that.

The only gag in here I find particularly clever is Baby Snooks burying Ned Sparks in the sand, not only because of the insane and abrupt way she dumps the sand on him, but also because of their exchange before-hand; Ned’s slow, sneering speech pattern contrasts Snooks brattiness in such a way I wish somebody had the guts to do a cartoon with just these two.

The other gags, like someone reciting “I’ve come not to praise Caesar, but to bury him” and a crab calling Ned Sparks a crab, could grow on me given half the chance, but I can’t remember what happens in most of the cartoon, and the ending is really boring (too much useless dialog!). It’s a well-made film, as the scenery and caricatures are really nice, but please don’t ask me to watch it again.

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It's nice to see Friz getting away from those damn musicals and into more sophisticated storylines. After a scrambling chase scene the mouse pauses to question his very nature of being chased by a cat, whom he convinces to do the same thing through a direct monologue addressing the issues of live and let live and making the most of your time. I'm positively convinced of his courage when he stands up to the cat and it's a wake-up call that the little guy can stand up to the bully in a civilized manner.

You'll have to watch it to see if the cat does as well in standing up to the dog, where the cat goes from nervous to feigned courage to outright hysterics in leaping up and down the gate while talking to Spike. Even with the mid-level, semi-realistic characters and scenery, the acting is top notch.

Rating: 4/7

Geez, it's like the Ant and the Grasshopper all over again. Eat your eat out, Aesop. This goes right from Porky farming his ass off to a bear singing "Working Can Wait". It's a bit amusing when his farm animals begin singing, but then we get the inevitable scenes of his winter starvation and the mouse snatching his last bean. Despite Porky's generosity he doesn't learn anything except to play "Working Can Wait" faster. An update on The Ant and the Grasshopper I guess, the plot twists are more predictable than Pigs is Pigs.

Rating: 5/7

There's something so UNPURE about filling classic fairytales full of jokes about hangovers and poaching. Why can't these people do something more wholesome, you know, something for the kiddies, like Tex Avery? Never mind. Red isn't as sexy and the wolf isn't as sleazy and the madcap isn't as mad as Red Hot Riding Hood but it transcends fairy-tale satire with some outrageous situations that don't have anything to do with the fairy-tale but everything to do with misleading females, psycho old ladies, and fur fetishes. Even better, it has the wolf get up in a sailor suit like a momma's boy, prancing through the woods to the Nutcracker Suite.

It's all part of the wolf's "goody-twoshoe" image he projects for a jury full of wolves to demonize LRRH, a movie actress with "guilty" written all over her face. They keep her ambivalent as to whether she's really as the wolf describes her but I'm almost ready to believe... Grandma has enough heavy artillery to massacre a liter of dalmations (you might even say 101 Dalmations, and I say go for it!). Those mallet shots are pure comedy gold.

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Rating: 4/7

Eeek...This is a really pointless attempt at an Avery-style documentary (It even steals some of his choice phrases). A few scenes, the phoney archer, the billard guy, and one other I can't remember made me laugh, but I have to sit through these dull swimming sequences with ugily realistic (though anatomically well-rendered) human characters to get to them as well as a boring animated diagram and the most ridiculous pun that must have shamed Avery when he saw it ("Here's a dive...and there's a dive"...wait, that might have been the other thing I laughed at).

Three technical features I like that bumped up the rating: The ping-pong eyes, the blurry guy, and the different styles of design.

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If any cartoon lives up to its name, it’s got to be Rhapsody in Rivets. Friz was said to have timed his cartoons on music sheets and I certainly believe it. Admittedly I’m not always thrilled about watching it, since there’s not much of a plot to hang onto. In fact it bored me the first time I watched it. But when you pay close attention to what you’re watching, and catch something, like say the hammer guy on the girder nervously grinning at the foreman ready to throw a brick at him, you’ll laugh at every gag in succession without a break.

The set-up sounds like something Tex Avery would come up with, a construction foreman stands in-front of blueprints sitting on a wooden stand like a music sheet, and leads his workers around like a conductor would lead an orchestra. It’s not physically fantastic like an Avery scenario, but it’s just as far out. The film progresses in a segmented fashion, establishing a ton of themes that it develops, quickly drops, and even comes back to a few scenes later. One example would be the frustrated Irish worker who can’t get up the ladder, which is revisited abruptly after the next scene, but don’t let me get ahead of myself.

What puts this above all of Friz’s films for me, besides being better timed than most of them (and that really says something) is that there is a rush of mad, silly ideas in here and the film is formatted to accommodate these ideas wherever they may come up. Not only that, the film’s sequencing is well planned out, beginning with shots of conductor waving his arms around like a moron alternating with scenes of his workers doing whatever it is they’re supposed to do, often simulating a musical instrument with their tools (I like the guy who saws at a square log like a cello!). This goes on for a while, with a few gags built up and delivered along the way (like the guy who falls asleep at his post) until the conductor disappears and one sequence of gags after another flies out at you. Don’t even try to memorize their order, no matter how many times I watch this thing I’m still surprised when I see a scene that I thought would come after another scene, or whatever. You’re only choice is to focus on the gags for all they’re worth and enjoy them.

Thanks to the way in which the film flows, the gags appear to be chained together, so chances are you’ll find a certain gag funnier if you laughed at the previous gag. That’s certainly necessary for the gag where various workers are shown on different floors hammering away to work; it’s not only a very silly, totally impossible gag while being physically believable, it also comes off the heels of another silly, totally impossible, and physically believable gag, and since you’re following the music, whether you know it or not, you’ll be psyched for the next gag simply because all these crescendos and climaxes and bridges and choruses are building you up for it off the heels of the last one. This, more than anything, demonstrates Friz’s timing genius. By the way, the whole film is synced to one piece, Liszt’s “Second Hungarian Rhapsody” (I wouldn’t know that if not for the LT and MM book; I need to do my classical homework) and it’s nothing short of amazing that Friz and crew could create such hilarious footage set to one ongoing piece.

You might notice I haven’t really described any of the gags. That’s because describing even one gag thoroughly can ruin the whole thing for you, and every gag works the same way anyway. Eventually the cartoon builds to a fantastic climax and you’re left wondering how it was possible to make this thing. The character designs aren’t much to write home about but they still convey enough personality to be effective and the scenery is so gorgeous it almost looks like a photograph of a real construction site. I can’t believe Tweety Pie won an academy award and this thing lost, but who the hell takes mainstream recognition seriously anyway? Just watch the cartoon and marvel at Freleng’s microscope-like precision.

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Starting with a live-action shot (stock footage, probably) of a busy, dimly lit city block, several animations of neon signs intersperse with billboards coming to life and a few "normal" animations in the subway below. The "No Nothing" sign is an amusing parody of the "NO SHIRT NO SHOES NO SERVICE" signs at restaurants and the typewriter-emulating billboard accompanies its typing and slashing with cute sound effects, each return and retype delayed long enough to make you notice how well-timed it is.

The "live" parts include a couple of gags involving Chinese characters (human) stretching to read a vertically-scrolling sign and carrying a subway through China town, while the Chinese alphabet dots a neon eye test conducted by "Dr. I.C. Spots" at the bottom of a billboard. As for the living billboard icons, a clown sings along with some movie song while breaking out in laughther and another musical number comes in with more billboard icons joining the fun, though I wish they filled this space with something other than the obligatory musical number.

Starting off strong and rambling a bit, the billboard graphics are interesting (like the dark billboard that lights up into a flower pattern) but this could have used some more gags like the first billboard and some more personifications of city life - How about a cluster of adjacent neon shapes lighting up in the form of a couple doing a waltz (Now I'm suggesting gags for a WB cartoon made in 1940. I may as well proceed straight to writing episodes for 'Drawn Together Like Shit')? They don't seem to know where they wanted to go. Nevertheless, it's an interesting experiment and fun to have around just for the lights animations.

Rating: 4/7

It's just a collection of every dog - cat - mouse cliche in the book. But it has some snappy reactions and wind-up/release animation to make it watchable all the way through, and the Tex Avery-type gags are a nice touch.

Rating: 4/7

An Avery-style documentary that demonstrates how good Friziz at timing. Prince Charming wakes Sleeping Beauty with something other than a kiss, Old Mother Hubbard opens one cubbard door and suspiciously leaves the other closed, the lazy grasshopper shows the ant how his ass is covered, Tom Thumb grows up by taking his vitamins, the wolf in sheep's clothing finds a little competition, and the boy who cried wolf can't stop gloating everytime he gets a woodsman to come over...even inside the wolf. You could easily mistake this for an Avery cartoon if not for the designs, and the lower sarcasm quotient.

Rating: 5/7

Another cartoon that starts off with some promising gags and settles into repetition. Elmer's pursuit of Bugs as a Canadian mounted officer hangs an air of urgency that only adds hilarity to the wabbit's abuse (and hey Elmer, have you seen the skeletons of Ren and Stimpy along the way?). An early highligh is Bugs handcuffing Elmer to a bomb and acting ignorant while Elmer begs him for the key. Another one is Bugs imitating Elmer's commanding officer and stripping him while a drum plays.

Despite a few good gags I'm lulled into catatonia by the endless chasing. And I'm rarely wooed over by Bugs and Elmer leaving effigies in the snow (even when one of them turns out to be a dame). But things pick up at the end when Elmer takes Bugs away, and we're treated to a funny bunch of black faces singing "Capetown Races 5 Miles Long".

Unless you're watching this thing on Cartoon Network, in which case you'll have to accept the cut-off after Bugs sings "I wish I was in Dixie". Even so, seeing this is not a matter of life or death.

Rating: 5/7

The cinematography isn't as outlandish as I Got Plenty of Mutton, yet it shows Friz can exploit this deceptive humor using less exotic camera angles. A Lenny-esque sheep dog who repeats himself ad infinitum, which only makes it funnier when he interrupts himself with an outburst, is pitted against a Shakespeare-recitin' wolf who badly dresses up like a sheep. Their first encounter takes place when the wolf tries repeatedly to pounce a sheep, a cycle of animation shown over and over at varying close-ups backed by string blasts until they reach the dog. They romance like Pepe Le Pew, act out a scene from Little Red Riding Hood, and hide behind bails of hay. In the end, we get a good idea of how inept the wolf's disguise really was!

Rating: 4/7

Role-reversal! How O-Regan-Ol! This is kinda blah for me until near the end, when suddenly Elmer becomes a rabbit and some good gags happen: Hiding behind Bugs and feeding carrots, darting in all directions, and turning Bugs' muddling back on him. I gotta say though, I like the contrast between Bugs and Elmer's attitudes to losing.

Rating: 7/7

Proof above all that the Warner Bros. cartoon artists were not only gifted comedians, illustrators and animators, but also gifted story-tellers. Even though I don’t watch too many movies, including old ones, I wonder how many ‘love stories’ have a single guy falling in love and walking away thinking he won without meeting a single girl the whole time? That’s exactly what happens to a Pinto Colvig-voiced dog who touchingly laments how grand love is after watching bluebirds swoon each other. After getting brushed off by a snobby poodle (Who mocks his huh-yuck laugh! Yes!), he finds the girl of his dreams in a yard surrounded by a brick wall, and wait ‘till you see what it is!

The real key to this film is not only having some of the most detailed story development in a cartoon short, but also nuances of character motion. Even though the animation doesn’t madly flail like Rod Scribner’s work for Bob Clampett, the ‘Goofy’ dog bouncing around and spouting with joy is still unhinged, and there are attention-grabbing creases and scrambling motions in the ridiculously-proportioned bulldog who can’t even understand what the other guy is doing there. The animation expresses the characters without drawing attention to itself, as effective as any slap-happy movement. And the realism is amazing – How many cartoon characters stick out their Adam’s apple during a monologue?

Pinto Colvig turns out to be an excellent actor for someone who only does one voice – This dog may sound like Goofy, but he comes off as a completely different character that is dumber yet somehow more self-aware and likeably earnest. It’s a real testament to his acting ability that the dog can celebrate his newfound love without coming off like an idiot but instead drag you along for his ride of ecstasy. I even get so wrapped up in his joyous outbursts I don’t care that he’s not in love with a real dog!

There seems to be every type of gag in here, and Friz had enough wisdom in his self-restraint to make visual gags work without going into Tex Avery-screwiness. The outline of the dog’s heart swinging like a pendulum is probably the one gag to sum-up the genius here, as it’s the perfect visual gag to convey what the dog is thinking and is more clever than the standard heart thumping (Even Bugs’ heart pounding in and out his chest with the label ‘4F’ isn’t that clever). Heck there’s even some Clampett-esque sarcasm when the bulldog first confronts him frolicking in the flower garden (and when the bulldog ends up on Pinto’s back).

It almost seems to be two cartoons at once – a comedy and a drama. One of the best staged and most electrifying scenes (sorry) in WB history is Pinto’s Dog’s first kiss. You can feel the heartbreak when the object of his affection is taken away and the next part is one of the most intense settings in a cartoon ever.

There’re a lot of subtle details to pick up on, little motions the characters make before the next scene or major action. Even the scenes where Pinto’s Dog burrows underground exhibit more inventive staging and result in some funny moments that Bugs Bunny would never provide.

Simply put, this is one of the great successes in cartoon history, a cartoon that can stir other emotions besides laughter, where the characters and plot unfold like a good novel condensed into seven minutes of amazingly well-drawn animation.