Undescribable Perfection

Thanks for the memories!

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

One of the best and funniest cartoons seen recently. The animation is nicely stylised and fluid with expressive colours and well drawn backgrounds. Not quite as refined as other cartoons seen with somewhat of the TV animation look at times with the character designs, but it never becomes distractingly bad. The music is energetic and characterful, adding so much to the action as well as sounding great. Always one of the best things about a Warner Bros cartoon and not a disappointment at all in this regard in Dough Ray Me-Ow. The story is crisply paced and amusing though with Louie's attempts to kill Heathcliff deliciously dark. While the writing is fresh and witty, the banter between the two characters is a joy to hear and highlighted by the brilliant one-man show vocals of Mel Blanc, and the gags are hilarious to the point you're in hysterics while watching and after(the cracking nuts, dynamite, birth certificate and ending fare the best). Louie and especially Heathcliff carry the cartoon wonderfully and while an unlikely pairing are vastly entertaining in chemistry, they are not the best characters but are underrated ones that deserved to be much more than one-shot. Their personalities range from almost sadistic to very stupid, but the writing helps them to be endearing in their own right. To conclude, a truly great cartoon and has great entertainment value, one of the better and funnier cartoons seen personally in about a month or so. 10/10 Bethany Cox

This is one of my personal favorite cartoons, and by far my favorite cartoon directed by the underrated Arthur Davis. The cartoon stars a dumb cat named Heathcliff and an intelligent yet malevolent parrot named Louie. When Louie discovers that Heathcliff will inherit a large sum of money, Louie fabricates multiple nefarious schemes in order to kill him(the will states that Louie will inherit the money upon Heathcliff's passing.) Most of the gags are pretty predictable, but that is not why it is such a great cartoon. The personalities of Heathcliff and Louie are what makes this cartoon so funny. It is so hard to believe that they only appeared in one cartoon. The animation is fluid and very expressive, and Mel Blanc, who voiced the characters, is funny as always. The writing, as always for a Warner Bros. cartoon, is sharp and witty, and the timing is extremely impressive. Cartoons like this are the reason Warner Bros. cartoons will always be the greatest cartoons ever created.

One of the few cartoons directed by Arthur Davis during the approximately two years when he headed what had been Bob Clampett's unit (Warner Bros. discontinued it in 1948), "Dough Ray Me-ow" shows something that we Looney Tunes fans know well: the more that you try to hurt someone, the more you get hurt. Think of Wile E. Coyote going after Road Runner, or Sylvester going after Tweety.Of course, it's always a hoot to see how this poetic justice plays out. In this case, wise-guy parrot Louie reads in his master's will that the inheritance will go not to Louie, but to the master's oafish cat Heathcliff. So, Louie goes about trying to kill Heathcliff, but the latter seems to have the best luck in the world! Which of course means that one mishap after another befalls Louie.So, this was probably a place holder in between the really great cartoons, but you really gotta love what happens here. I guess that Davis never had a chance to develop his own specific style, but he released a few neat cartoons during his brief directorial career (namely "Bowery Bugs"). Worth seeing.

There are quite a few shorts which have been made that were modeled on the characters of George and Lenny from Of Mice and Men and this cartoon is along those lines-with a modification in the standard riff played in such cartoons. As I want to talk specifically about parts of this short, this is a spoiler warning: Heathcliff is possibly the most moronic character to show up in cartoons-and that's saying something. Heathcliff has to be told to BREATHE at one point by his "friend", a parrot by the name of Louie. Heathcliff is a very large cat. Why Heathcliff doesn't introduce Louie to his digestive system can only be blamed on the fact that he clearly has only one active brain cell.The start of the cartoon has Heathcliff rushing in to have Louie solve various problems, much to the exasperation of Louie. Then Louie reads to Heathcliff "what is on this pretty paper" Heathcliff brings to his attention-it's a will leaving a million dollars to Heathcliff, with an addendum which gives the money to Louie if something happens to Heathcliff. Greed jumps on Louie's head and he decides to make something happen. Louie isn't exactly a Rhodes scholar himself, because all he has to do is just stop helping Heathcliff and the cat will give up the ghost inside of two hours, tops.There are a bunch of hilarious sight gags involving Heathcliff and eating (and cracking) nuts. Louie's attempts on Heathcliff's life are as funny as they are unsuccessful. He tries to electrocute him by having him play a game of "Radio", tries to bribe a bulldog into taking Heathcliff out and so on, with zero success.Finally, he tells Heathcliff it's his birthday and gives him a cake with three candles and a stick of dynamite. Heathcliff decides he's only three years old and gives Louie the stick of dynamite. There follows a lengthy tug of war between the two regarding his age until Heathcliff finds his birth certificate and it says he's four.The ending is hilarious and I won't spoil it here. This short is available on Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume 4 and is well worth seeing. Recommended.