Watch something else. There are very few redeeming qualities to this film.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

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

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Love animation, it was a big part of my life as a child, particularly Disney, Looney Tunes and Tom and Jerry, and still love it whether it's film, television or cartoons.'Pigs is Pigs' is not one of Friz Freleng's best cartoons by any stretch, in an uneven "still evolving" period of his long career, and he was yet to be in his full prime and not yet found his style properly. For a relatively early effort, 'Pigs is Pigs' has some interest but it's a bit bland too. It is never what one would call hilarious, Freleng's later efforts show more evenness and confidence in directing and the story is flimsy and occasionally loses momentum, taking too long to get going. It is also rather disjointed. Things become significantly more interesting in the truly nightmarish and sometimes second second half than the overly-cutesy and sugary sweet first act. Sadly, the two halves do feel like two different cartoons that don't gel properly with each other.However, the characters are fun, especially the antagonist the scientist while the pig is a decent protagonist. The conflict between them carries 'Pigs is Pigs' and does so very well.The cartoon is amusing at times when it becomes more interesting and entertaining in the nightmarish second half.Animation is excellent, it's fluid in movement, crisp in shading, vibrant in colour and very meticulous in detail. Ever the master, Carl Stalling's music is typically superb. It is as always lushly orchestrated, full of lively energy and characterful in rhythm, not only adding to the action but also enhancing it. Voice acting from particularly Billy Bletcher is terrific.All in all, interesting but not great. Freleng did much better since. 6/10 Bethany Cox

. . . "Piggy," with this animated short, PIGS IS PIGS. Warner wanted to underline their warning to America about the Fat Cat Greedheads who had caused the then on-going Great Depression. No matter how much the gluttonous Piggy ingests here, he not only wants--he finds a way to STEAL more. Piggy is shown at the family supper table slurping down all the spaghetti right off his nine siblings' plates into his own insatiable gullet with such a gusto it was adapted by THERE WILL BE BLOOD villain Daniel Day Lewis into his infamous "I'll suck your straw!" scene. Even when Piggy falls into the clutches of an evil scientist, who force-feeds him fuller than a dozen Foie Gras geese, Piggy still is grasping for MORE! Warner tries to warn America NEVER to allow the One Per Center thieves and self-proclaimed Billionaires to ever filch our food again, Lording it over everyone else. These miscreants MUST be neutralized with extreme prejudice, just as the Looney Tuners pigged out themselves at Piggy's pig roast after completing PIGS IS PIGS. We all know how the U.S. Sheep Nation has backslid in the face of the Porkers to date. But as they say at the corner butcher shop, growing a backbone is better late than never.

This was an early animated prototype of Stanley Kubrick's "A Clockwork Orange" (which, btw, was released not in the late '60s, but in the early70s, and coincidentally it was the first of his pernament Warner Bros.Studio association!)Other toons used this gimmick too. MGM's "Pipe Dreams" Warner's own "Wholly Smoke" Art Clokey's "Grub Grabber Gumby!"Billy Bletcher was the villain, the very obscure Bernice Hansen, the little pig. The title was the only thing from that 1905 E.P.Butlerbook,"Pigs is Pigs", with a very different storyline than the WB cartoon, but Disney made a film twenty years later of the Butler book. WB was indeed the most cynical of the studios till Jay Ward,Hanna Barbera, then Spumco in the 90s.Soundtrack includes "Fella with a Fiddle" and "When My Dreaboat Comes Home", also much used in WB shorts of the time-"Fella" in "The Cat Came Back", "The Blow-Out",the title short "Fella", and "Little Beau Porky",and "Dreamboat" in "Porky's Badtime Story", and its remake "Tick Tock Tuckered",and "The Birth of a Notion".When the mother pig (talking in a Jewish accent--VERY sneaky WB type joke even for that un-PC period!) (as we see the outside shot of the piggie house!) warns her sonny-boy of indigestion, WE know he might have some nightmare, especially when he finds himself in a different place all of a sudden, especially when a Billy Bletcher-voiced mad doctor appears! But is it a dream, reality, or is it Memorex?(Compare this with PORKY's shorts, or more recent live action comedies about fatness--"Big Momma's House 1 and 2", and this year's smashes "Norbit" and "Hairspray"! (and that last was set back in the sixties..)The ending, like the "A Clockwork Orange" gimmick,is like "Wholly Smoke" (same director,Frank Tash), which DID have Porky.

Piggie is always hungry and constantly thinks about nothing else but food. And no matter how much he eats, it is never enough! In a rather silly nightmare sequence, Piggie meets a jaundiced mad scientist, who devises some intricate mechanical gadgetry in order to force-feed Piggie large quantities of all kinds of goodies, much to the scientist's mischievous delight. Is it any wonder, therefore, that the appropriate title for this cartoon would be "Pigs Is Pigs"? It is definitely far from being my favorite Warner Bros. cartoon, but it still has its good points.In my opinion, the best moments from this short include the following. The popular song "When My Dreamboat Comes Home" can be heard during the opening shot of the straw house while the little piglets are outside playing, and also during the later nocturnal shot of the house while the piglets are sleeping. Piggie swipes a pie off of the windowsill and spins it around his finger as he eats it; he tries to eat a second pie in the same manner, but the mother pig catches him in time and he accidentally chomps on his bare fingers. And at the dinner table, all the little piglets humorously babble grace while Piggie ties all of their spaghetti strands together, so that he can devour all the spaghetti with one big slurp.So there you have "Pigs Is Pigs" in a nutshell. If you ever decide to watch this cartoon, it is my recommendation that you have a little something to eat before you do.