Awesome Movie

As Good As It Gets

Admirable film.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

"Little Red Rodent Hood" is a 7-minute cartoon from Warner Bros and as this one is from 1952, it is already almost 65 years old. Freleng, Foster, Blanc and Benederet have worked on an uncountable number of these cartoons and this is just another in the long list. but it is not a really good achievement I would say. Red Riding Hood was a popular topic and Warner Bros made a handful short films on this famous fairy tale, all with not too great plays on words in the title just like in this case. And "not so great" is also a perfectly accurate description of this cartoon. It is wild, all over the place and really more relies on ridiculous costumes than on real wit and comedic substance. Certainly nowhere near Warner Bros' best cartoons. This one is entirely forgettable. Don't watch.

Fun Sylvester short directed by Friz Freleng. A little grandma mouse is reading her granddaughter mouse, Teeny, the story of Little Red Riding Hood. But since this is the mouse version of that tale, naturally the wolf is replaced by Sylvester the cat. Sylvester gets more than he bargained for, not just from Teeny, but from bulldog Hector as well. Lots of funny gags in this one. As another reviewer mentioned, these old parodies of fairy tales were usually very good. Lively music from Carl Stalling. Great voice work from Mel Blanc and Bea Benaderet. Blanc's voice for Teeny is pretty similar to his voice for Tweety. The animation is beautiful with rich colors and well-drawn characters and backgrounds. The light blue eyes on Teeny are a nice touch. I also love Teeny's bed being a matchbox. The little things like that are common in cartoons of the time involving mice (Tom & Jerry especially) but I never get tired of it. Anyway, it's not one of the best Sylvester cartoons but it is an enjoyable one.

I have to say: almost every cartoon I have seen which was a takeoff on the famous "Little Red Riding Hood" tale has been very clever and funny.....and this one is no exception.Instead of the usual cast of characters, we have "Teeny," the little mouse playing "Red" and Sylvester The Cat playing the big, bad wolf. The action takes place inside house, not in a forest, but the artists make the interior almost look like a forest. So, not only is the story humorous and pretty smart, but so is the artwork which really looks gorgeous with this Golden Collection Volume 5 "restored" version.As good as this looks, though, it's still the jokes that make this such a winner. A lot of kids wouldn't get some of wise-guy humor, which is definitely geared toward making adults laugh, and some of it is topical, too, for anyone familiar with the early '50s."Red" was a wise-guy little rodent and Sylvester, was...well, Sylvester, who usually is pretty entertaining. I think Looney Tunes hit its peak in this period (1948-1954) with incredibly good material, and this cartoon is a prime example of good they were at this time.

OK, so fairy tales and bedtime stories are some of the easiest to make fun of, and "Little Red Riding Hood" may be at the top of the list. Before "Little Red Rodent Hood", the Termite Terrace crowd had already made "Little Red Riding Rabbit", and they later made "Red Riding Hoodwinked". This one portrays a mouse's grandmother telling him the famous story, and the mouse imagines it with himself as Red and Sylvester as the wolf. You can probably guess what sorts of things he does to Sylvester; naturally one trick involves dynamite (they loved their TNT, didn't they?).So, this is far from the best Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies cartoon; having seen "Duck Amuck" and "What's Opera, Doc?", I expect really clever, high quality from them. But it's OK in a pinch. Currently available on the Looney Tunes website.Yeah, nobody whistles Dixie anymore.