Overrated and overhyped

Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

As a young child Looney Tunes was on every day at 5pm. I rarely missed it. However, there were a few cartoons from WB that I really disliked. At the top of that short list was 'It's Hummer Time'. If it came on I'd either leave the room, or change the channel.As with most of the cartoons made from this period, it's wonderfully animated and beautifully scored. The problem is the disturbing storyline between the dog, cat and hummingbird.A dim-witted cat, pursuing a smart a** hummingbird, disturbs the rest of a large aggressive bulldog. In most cartoons the bulldog would simply belt the cat for this indignity and that would be it. Not in this case. To the tune of a rather appropriate choice of angry and aggressive music called 'Powerhouse', he drags the cat, who screams for mercy, to an elaborate torture sequence. The cat then blithely accepts his sadistic fate.Maybe this would be ok if it happened just once, but it happens several times, as the Hummingbird tries and succeeds in getting the cat in continual trouble with the dog. Eventually the bird get the best of the cat and dog and the cartoon ends. How hilarious. Like most rational people you'd be happy to see the bird, clearly a nasty sociopath with no redeeming qualities, turned into a bird pie. Unfortunately, this doesn't eventuate.I can only conclude that the main writer thought that senseless violence, no matter its form, is always funny. Well, it isn't.

Directed by Robert McKimson, with a fine music score by Carl W. Stalling, "It's Hummer Time" is a fun Warner Brothers cartoon about a griping feline's travails in attempting to catch a hummingbird. A bulldog gets into the act, and I won't reveal much more than that.My favorite highlights include the dog's hilarious "I tawt I taw a putty tat!"; the "Happy Birthday" punishment; and "The Works", in which the dog finally gets his comeuppance as he and the cat get dragged all over hell's half-acre.Among all the wonderful popular songs that I recognize in "It's Hummer Time" are "I'm Looking over a Four-Leaf Clover", "Powerhouse", "By a Waterfall", "Baby Face", "Teddy Bears' Picnic", and "Ain't We Got Fun". So you see, when you watch these classic Warner Bros. cartoons, especially those with music scores by Carl Stalling, it's really fun to be able to listen and pick out various melodies you may recognize.

Robert McKimson's 'It's Hummer Time' is a gorgeous and extremely inventive cartoon that expands on the usual bird-cat-dog chase formula by incorporating sadistically pre-prepared punishments on the dog's part. Like many Spring/Summer based cartoons ('Swallow the Leader', 'Springtime for Thomas' to name but two), 'It's Hummer Time' is beautiful to look at, filled with uplifting bright colours. The plot pushes the whole thing into the realms of the classic as predictable spot gags are hysterically punctuated with unpredictable follow-ups in which the insistent dog drags the cat kicking and screaming to punishments that have been carried out so frequently in the past that the cat has named them all ("Oh no, not the thinker!"). There's also a pleasingly cyclical nature to the plot in which the cat begins and ends the cartoon as a bird bath. 'It's Hummer Time' was remade the following year as the infinitely inferior, over-complicated 'Early to Bet' which comes nowhere near recapturing the magic of this unique cartoon.

Maybe I would have liked "It's Hummer Time" more had they cast Sylvester and Tweety. Still, the hummingbird and anonymous cat do some neat things. The cat keeps trying to catch the hummingbird, but always awakens a nearby bulldog, who proceeds to put the feline through increasingly nasty punishment. But the bird turns out not to be quite what he seems.I think that the best part was "The Thinker". Like the "books come to life" series and the Bugs Bunny-Elmer Fudd pairing "What's Opera, Doc?", it exposes children to high culture. All in all, this cartoon is worth seeing, if only once. Available on the Looney Tunes website.