Rating: 6/7

Frank's return to Warner Bros. (after working at Columbia) is littered with Clampett and Avery influences but it still retains his unique stamp. The plot involves Porky and Daffy trying to escape from a hotel when they can't come up with the money to pay their bill, and the gags are all quite simple, but their choreographing defies description. Simply put, Tashlin did so many creative things with the camera angles and the cutting and the synchronization I don't even know where to begin.

I can't tell you everything, obviously, but a few examples are in order. There are a couple of instances where one of the characters (Daffy in one, the manager in other) will appear on screen the instant another character refers to him (no matter where they are). There’s a scene with the characters running through every door in the hallway, configured in a different position each time they come out (i.e. Daffy is riding on the manager piggy-back style), that predicts the gag in Lonesome Lenny. The Avery gag is more inspired, but here at least the fluid, economical animation makes the characters’ running hilarious to see, not to mention plays up the menacing presence of the manager.

Speaking of which, the manager is handled amazingly here, and I don’t just mean his role as a villain. Fat guys are notoriously difficult to animate (remember Kowalski from Ren and Stimpy?) but there’s some meticulously-detailed animation for his opening scene, not to mention the WILD manner in which Daffy confronts the manager, with the duck pushing his face against the manager’s so hard his beak curls backward and the manager’s face turns inside out.

Another gag I should mention is the stair gag – this isn’t the strongest point of the cartoon because it takes so long to set up, but it’s still funny because a) The Manager’s vocal intonations are some of the best Mel Blanc has ever done (A low, prissy grumble and a high-pitched scream that reminds me of a bull snorting, pitched higher than Yosemite Sam) and b) The part where he tricks Porky and Daffy into thinking he fell down the stairs a second time is the best fake-out gag Bob Clampett never did. It’s almost identical to the gag in Book Revue and just as good, as Porky and Daffy’s motions are well-selected to display how slow they are to realize the manager is right by them, and the manager is very astute in lowering his voice so they think he is farther down the stairs. And since this pre-dates Book Revue by a good three years it appears Tashlin and Clampett were swapping inspiration.

The best moments challenge vintage Bob Clampett, but the last few minutes let it down. Eventually you realize the gags are never going to advance beyond the “manager is unbeatable” motif and they’re only meant for wrapping up the cartoon. Besides, there’s a partitioned feel to the sequencing and Clampett’s cartoons were more convincingly spontaneous. But if you are a cartoon fan you must pay due respect to Frank Tashlin and this is essential viewing. And since it isn’t included in the Golden Age of Looney Tunes sets (because b&w Looney Tunes aside from the Harman-Ising stuff aren’t on there) you’ll have to tape it off Cartoon Network. Good luck.

Rating: 5/7

I don't like getting political on this site but I'm always hesitant to view "us" as the GOOD GUYS in World War II, simply because that entails we avoid examining our own negative aspects, not to mention the atrocities we committed (I'd bring some of 'em up but this ain't the place). That said, when you consider we were fighting Hitler, I can accept our role in that war as opposed to our foreign policy afterwards, which was as hideous as that of the Soviet Union's (Just ask Vietnam, Cambodia, Iran, and pretty much every country below Mexico).

That's why I'm bugged by jingoism, but since the war was on, I'm willing to overlook the sloganeering of Daffy's imagined ancestors and their "Americans don't give up" chanting, not to mention the "Freedom Foe" caricatures of Hitler, Mussolini, and whoever that Japanese guy is (Tojo, Yamamoto, who cares). The latter, actually, has Daffy dancing in-front-of three broken mirrors, his reflections morphing into these caricatures, which is at least an intelligent way of executing such propaganda.

Daffy does a song and dance number about collecting scrap metal for the war effort, the scenery he trots through predicting the UPA look with looming, decorative, John McGrew-ish backgrounds and chalk outlines for the scrap objects. Lots of convoluted sequencing over here as he plunges and kicks his way through the junkyard, doing zany things like drumming on his helmet. A goat is sent by Adolf Hitler (who just happens to read about Daffy's scrap in the paper) to eat the junk and lots of bizarre choreography ensues. The goat spends a lot of time skidding on the ground just to avoid hitting some glasses, there's that Tashlin favorite where they bend their snouts over while grinning at each other, and others.

The Hitler caricature is the second best from WB (after Russian Rhapsody), screaming high-pitched gibberish subtitled at the bottom and eating a carpet. This picture tosses one bent camera angle after another, especially all the cuts between Hitler's goons. There are pluses like the metal bouncing in the goat and the end gag is really funny. If I have to watch a propaganda film - And this is more direct propaganda than Jones' Weakly Reporter - There's nothing I'd rather have.

Rating:

Rating: 5/7

Pssst...I don't want to alarm anybody here, but Chuck Jones blatantly ripped-off two concepts from here, one of which was a one-off gag, for his own cartoons and proceeded to recycled them endlessly. Not that I'm trying to discredit Chuck; he expanded on these concepts and gave them a dimension their prototypes don't have. You get to see them here with classic WB production values and Frank Tashlin presentation.

You won't find the wolf perched atop his pot, paranoically leering at the empty room after mice drink all his water, nor the lenghty kneeling view of his stomach as a pea bounces inside in a Chuck cartoon. Frank has the wolf doing something that looks unnatural but comes off...natural (like Tex Avery!) while face-to-face with the ram, who exhibits that sinister, arrogant grin the hotel manager in Pig Feat wore to hint at his invincibility, and even mimicks the wolf.

Anyway, there's lots of chasing and stuff. The wolf uses disguises, and it does stick with the same disguise for the rest of the cartoon, which kills the variety but the sudden bits of animation with the ram leaping about are a real treat. Plus, it's interesting to see elements from Chuck Jones cartoons played out in this hyper fashion rather than Chuck's streamlined, "building-block" method.

Rating: 4/7

The darkest day I could imagine has arrived – I’m placing a Frank Tashlin cartoon on the same level of quality as Ren’s Retirement. But don’t worry – if you have a choice this is still more watchable than Chuck Jones pap like Ghost Wanted; more watchable, but not more enjoyable. See, even though I’m not seriously bored by this Tashlin cartoon, I have to punish it for dragging through seven minutes without doing anything.

Only one gag in here – dare I say, the only gag – makes me laugh: When Porky auditions male crooners to win back his gaggle of hens who have been allured into unconsciousness by “Frankie”, he gets a Jimmy Durante rooster with a visual non-sequitur (and his singing is funny). Anyhow, there are dozens of cartoons with Jimmy Durante caricatures, and you don’t need this one anymore than the others.

Now get this – that’s the only entertaining moment here. It’s not as if the cartoon was painful to watch, since it was staged pretty darn well. The opening shot of the farm is a well conceived three-dimensional stage with all kinds of stuff (barns, hen houses, etc.) shown at a diagonal angle, but it’s like an attractive-looking cube with nothing inside. And the sequences showing the hens laying their eggs and what must go on in a typical work day are well-staged and interesting if you take it as a documentary showcasing the Farm of Tomorrow…but as comedy the material is plain weak. The gags don’t amount to anything more than chickens fainting. This isn’t handled with 1/10 the gusto of Tex Avery’s Little Tinker, and I can’t believe Porky laying a huge egg pile is are supposed to pass for a visual gag.

Rating: 5/7

What a sweet deal we have here - Through the backdrop of a barely-covered, yet important WWII theme (females working at the home front) lacking just enough references to Nazis that it can be shown on TV with one minor cut (which is a shame really 'cuz Butch's imitation of Churchill is downright creepy as his eyes glow while he smokes that long cigarette) Porky has to babysit a surreal wiseguy baby who's into sleazy adult things like gambling and nude females and making lots of mayhem; Think the baby from Who Framed Roger Rabbit. The baby's mother is a fruitcake who's pin-on button does a dead-on imitation of her welding-mask and likes to impersonate the very aircraft she's manufacturing. Watch the window as she tippy-toes out of the house.

Have I mentioned the camera-angles during her first meeting with Porky are among the best I ever saw? The scenery looks as though it's leaning over. Butch himself plays the surly wiseguy as he shuffles cards and reads "Esquire Jr." complete with scantily-clad babies rendered in oil. His imitation of Porky stuttering his name is one of the best gags ever from the pig's speech impairment, and the baby amicably giggles before correcting Porky to make his violent reaction more unexpected. That's the cartoon, really: Porky tries to get along with the baby and gets hurt in return, a process accelerated by a child psychology book that somehow knows what is going on.

I really wish the cartoon didn't feel so short - The overall experience is hampered by the last scenes dragging on, especially when they run through the same doorway a million times. Nevertheless, the best moments at the beginning are vital to understanding Frank Tashlin.

Rating: 6/7

You can never have too many cartoons satirizing WWII and female Nazi spies with unhinged, claustraphobic chase scenes (unless they all suck of course).

Daffy falls for the same tricks he says he's not gonna fall for. His predescessor is treated to all the trappings of a female spy, including seduction, intoxication, and suicide. Daffy fares better by resisting Hatte Mari's violent spasms with zany befuddling, showing he has a sense of honor even though he's dumb enough to be lured in by her charms (and lured back when he tries to escape).

Like Clampett cartoons, this one doesn't like to repeat itself, even if it doesn't feel as packed. Daffy's electrocution treats us to crisp flinging animation, his self-contradictions imply that he utterly enjoys acting like a screwball even though his life is in danger, which makes it more thrilling for us, and the chase scenes lob us with one spontaneous action after another, be it Hatte Mari bringing out more lethal weaponry or Daffy finding new sounds and motions to make while running. It may not be packed but it's downright full.

There's also a mock-up of Hitler and his sidekicks Himmler and Goering shown through a videophone sequence that predicts the end of WWII. Who knew Tashlin was a prophet?

Rating: 5/7

A duck searches for her missing egg who's walking through the snowy forest. All the raw materials for an enjoyable cartoon are present but their configuration doesn't build to a rousing climax, nor do the individual scenes really complement each other, though they are enjoyable separately.

A bear gets squashed against the ceiling and floats back down to gradually inflate back to size, all while snoozing obliviously and the momma duck scares her ducklings (who have all the comforts of home within their shells) into hatching by warming her rear end and ends up shouting the name of her missing kid over and over, all interesting experiments in visuals, verbals, and character reactions.

There's even a section that recalls Tex Avery, the screen literally freezing so the egg can comment on the direction this picture is headed. The best moment comes from a oneupmanship runaround between the mother duck and the wolf, who waits behind a tree with his arm stretched out only to stiffy glide out, exposing his whole body as he scrambles on tippy-toe to a rhythmic slide of keyboard notes. As for the mother duck, she pokes his eyes out and moves into frame in a way so as to make the background look like it's moving behind her.

Some of this is highly enjoyable but you have to put up with the plot flashing before your eyes. The premise worked better in Shell Shocked Egg.

Rating: 6/7

The real problem with Tashlin, the big reason why I can't count him in the same league as Jones, Clampett, and Avery, is that while his cartoons are full of stunningly creative ideas, they're never as satisfying, usually leaving character development halfway to draw attention to their eccentricites. So it only makes sense that I'd give his highest rating to the most eccentric one.

Look at Elmer's role for instance - He has no dialogue and yet that detached machine-gun laughter is all he needs to stay in character. And how about his fluttering and flying through the meadow, influxing in elevation and colored in unlikely pinks and blues? It was something when Bugs ran in and out of the screen while it scrolled at 100 miles an hour in The Unruly Hare but this... And don't dismiss the wild takes of his animal victims, particularly the horse's imitation of a lightning bolt and the cat's multiple suicides.

Then there's Daffy's confrontation with this "Stupid Cupid" where he stares him down, flattens his face, and flashes from one end to another while voicing his grievance which is quite unexpected and possibly the most unpredictable dialogue gag ever. The photo of his family (Duckman eat your heart out) totally makes this gag. His own shooting leads to the quietest moment in a cartoon otherwise driven by constant motion where his outline is displayed through a ridiculous number of barns and he plays with his beak in a self-aware fashion, surrendering to the newfound madness when the other animals didn't even know there was madness to surrender to.

Though the weirdness subsides after Daffy chases the hen, a few unlikely scenarios are conjured and quickly discarded when she pulls up that barrel with Daffy underneath and when the duck jumps out the window to show the rooster he's a family man. Daffy's delirious floating through one scene of the chase adds bizarreness to an otherwise ordinary setting.

The cartoon ends abruptly on a dull note but then, that only adds to the question of how something can go from stylized to normal in setting and handle all these different actions with the focus on the right spot. It's a normal-looking (except for that meadow) world where the animation is subtle and exaggerated. It may not be as fulfilling as the best of the big three but it's a world unto itself.

Rating: 5/7

The only one of two Bugs cartoons Frank Tashlin did, it’s a little too scatterbrained to be a classic but has some very good sequences. For some reason I always laugh when Elmer goes, “I hate widdle gway wabbits…huhuhuhuhuhuh” and he’s still frowning even while he laughs. This is one of my favorite Elmer designs, in fact. His head shape is more compact, highlighting his facial expressions and giving his happy faces a streak of innocence.

Next we have some out of control mayhem where Bugs convinces Elmer the forest is on fire and he runs around in a frenzy (you must see how he runs up and down through the scenery!) with Bugs doing his own zany slapstick to play along with the urgency of Elmer’s panicking. One thing you will not find in another cartoon is Bugs running and sliding through scrolling scenery, doing gymnastics of all sorts until he gets to his rabbit hole. Then there’s the gag where Elmer thinks he shot Bugs – I like how Elmer comes to realize he didn’t here.

Then there’s the instant semi-classic where Elmer shoots Bugs in the back. It’s funny because Elmer defiantly refuses to observe Bugs’ sense of tact. Er…you’ll know what that means when you see it. And that’s all. There’s nothing to write home about here, really. It’s only a hunting cartoon filtered through Tashlin’s madcap sense of film-making. And that’s a very good thing.

Rating: 6/7

GRIIIIIINDEEEEEER...LOOKING FOR MEEEEEEEEEEEAT...GRIIIIIINDEEEEEER WANTS YOU TO EEEEEEAAAAT-TTT Dah...dah...dah...dah-da-na-na-na Dah...dah...dah...dah-da-na-na-na

Somebody at the Toonzone forum wrote a particularly sharp comment about the classic WB cartoons: They take ordinary situations and handle them in absurd ways. And the situation here, a dog who wants meat, is unbelievable in how damn far out it is from the execution, so far out the effort they put into all these spastic motions and complex choreography is a little frightening.

The dog tosses and turns with a grin on his face while photorealistic meat scrolls through his thought balloon and when he's called out for lunch, he celebrates his food with an Indian rain dance, sneers at the content of his dish with a witty comment, jumps on his stomach pounding the ground and wails half-sincerely, coerces the background into joining his melodramatic display, lunges at mirages, the objects they really are changing into different shapes, and receives a morse code message from his brain.

All this cinematography could have supported Bob Clampett-level material, but Tashlin is content to use it for straightforward comedy. This is one of his most elaborately constructed films, and even though it lets down a little (later on they have another of those run-past-grab-the-thing-from-each-other fests that's become a WB staple), the sheer mania of the dog is enough to carry everything through. He's also falsely polite when confronted by the bulldog, which never made sense to me since he just lured him into a fire hydrant, and he's punched into a whirling dervish through the giddiest, most edge-of-your-seat clutching, stiffest animation of the bulldog casually pulling him closer and looking as though he's gonna punch him, only to push up the mutt's chin with his index finger and move him in position for the real punch, a highlight of Frank Tashlin's career as well as the picture.

There's also some cool music effects, like the dissonant strings when the little dog comes on, and the hungry dog's voice is so over-zealous and over-dramatic without grating it's a thrill to watch him get worked up. With more solid material this could have been Frank Tashlin's best.

Rating: 6/7

It looks like Warren Foster got the idea to redo A Tale of Two Kitties. Tashlin is close to Clampett in talent, but not quite - while this works for many of the same reasons TOTK worked, the humor doesn't strike that sublime vein the all-time classic hit upon (look at Catstello falling off the stilts - even just knowing he's going to walk off one of them is funny before it happens; TOTM doesn't have the same magic).

Nevertheless, you must check this out in the unlikely event you get sick of TOTK but want more like it. The interaction between Babbit and...Mousestello?...motivates this thing from start to finish whether it's 'Stello imitating the cat so thoroughly he's almost assaulting Babbit or putting himself in greater danger by panicking (such as banging on the door when it's clear Babbit won't let him in). Even better is when he doesn't know he's in danger - the scene where he leaps on the cat's fingers, retracting and extending his claws, is a classic for the ages.

Tashlin's mastery of camera angles is apparent throughout - one of them has 'Stello scrambling through the mousehole in panic, his arms and legs flailing every which way, and the angle is perfect for highlighting this animation. Another camera angle seems to be looking up behind Babbit while he's chewing out his fat mouse friend.

Rating: 6/7

I don’t know if this is a compliment to Frank Tashlin or not, but I when I first saw this I thought it was by Chuck Jones (apparently I didn’t pay attention to the credits – Tashlin isn’t credited at all and the other guys never worked with Chuck). In several ways it looks like Chuck could have done it (not mention it could have inspired animator Art Davis for his own directing career) but it is Tashlin who’s responsible for crafting this chef d’ouvers of Daffy insanity.

The film establishes a language at the beginning with a narrator explaining Daffy’s adoption and showing him aging so fast he hits the ceiling and says “You’re going too fast, y’crazy”. The playful manner which he fluctuates his eyebrows promises he’ll do anything to show you how slap-happy he is, and in fact this may be the most far out Daffy has gone in the zany department. He commits all kinds of insane actions, one after another, the biggest eye opener being when he destroys his owner’s dad’s table after knocking him on the head with the door, kicking off all the dishes and burrowing under the table cloth to greet his encouraging owner. There’s also a few scenes where Daffy blabbers non-stop anecdotes about wild goings-on in his life, like in A Pest in the House only here the anecdotes are funnier in the mayhem they imply plus they advance the plot by irritating the dad.

It’s all glued together by the dad, yet another fat guy. His animation is economical and by emphasizing the individual shapes that make up his figure the asymmetries in his posing and movements stand out quite a bit. He’s full of personality contradictions in fact – his hardcase demeanor suggests he’ll take no nonsense from Daffy but he can be goaded into playing along with Daffy’s zany whims (such as the knife fight) and even avoids harming the duck to appease his daughter. I think the ending is a little obvious but you’ve got to watch this to see how these two play off each other.

Rating: 4/7

Frank Tashlin's last film for Warner Bros. (with no director credit) isn't very imaginitive. The animation and camera shots look like vanilla, and the gags amount to little more than unexpected reptition of what a character has done before by another character. Sure it's got some Tashlin-isms like Elmer spinning around with Bugs in arms, but it lacks the fervor of other Tashlin scrolling backgrounds.

It's the same old Elmer vs. Bugs plot with the added twist that Elmer is playing mad scientist and trying to turn Bugs into a monster. I'd frankly prefer Hare Raising Hare and Water, Water Every Hare since they used the mad scientist bit more thoroughly. Aside from the scenes where Elmer sputters and shakes around the room, turning various colors, it may as well be a standard hunting cartoon. Even the "wabbit twap" gag from A Wild Hare and the bear gag from Wabbit Twouble are reused here, the former accompanied by a monologue over-doing Bugs' cynicism a bit.

Inspite of the blandness, I enjoy a few things: Elmer's opening dialogue where he puts on a devilish face and laughs with that vibrating lip attached to his gleeful, child-like face is priceless, and I enjoy him panting and eating grass with the doggy, as well as a few of Bugs' wild takes. Other than that there's little to reccomend the cartoon. There're no idiosyncratic designs, surrealism, challenging choreography, or creepiness that Tashlin is known for. I don't know the details behind his break with Warner Bros. but I know it wasn't pretty, and this may be why Hare Remover appears hacked-out.