Am I Missing Something?

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

Frank Tashlin had returned to the Schlesinger studio in 1942 after a four year absence. He returned in stronger form, directing several cinematic masterpieces.This Oscar nominated short is one of most popular and celebrated short he directed. The WB cartoons are known for caricaturing famous celebrities of the day. There were a few cartoons in the late 30's that lampooned popular crooners, but this was the ultimate tribute to the crooners and the songs they popularized. Frank Sinatra was an up and coming singer around this time and his intense popularity with teenage girls is referenced. Bing Crosby is featured as his rival to the ladies. I wonder if either of them ever commented on their depiction in this short, given how popular it was.This short was very popular among release and would be referenced in and influence future cartoons of this type. Chief among them Tex Avery's LITTLE TINKER (1948) and an uninspired CATCH AS CATS CAN (1947).One of my favorite shorts from the wartime period.

I agree with most of the above reviews, but the one that appears just prior to mine (at least as I am writing this) has a glaring error! It was written by a man in England who seems not to have been paying attention to the plot, which he scorns! No, Sir, the hens are not laying piles of eggs because they are aroused by Frankie's singing! They are DISTRACTED by his singing and are NOT laying eggs! THAT's why Porky is auditioning other caricature roosters: To get the hens back to work! The auditions are a riot! Sorry that you, Sir, are offended by what happens in this cartoon. Wake up, Man--this is not deep Orson Welles stuff! Take it as the funny send-up that it is!

Frank Tashlin's 'The Swooner Crooner' is a cartoon I never saw on TV as a child and seeing it on DVD now it's clear why it was kept off children's TV. The concept for the cartoon is one big dirty joke! Porky Pig is a farmer who wants to increase the amount of eggs that his hens lay. He realises that the sexual arousal they experience when watching a Frank Sinatra caricature rooster perform results in them laying eggs in enormous quantities. So Porky sets about auditioning singing roosters to keep the hens in a permanent state of arousal. 'The Swooner Crooner' is a bizarre and ever-so-slightly grotesque short which I've never warmed to in the least. Most of the gags consist of various images of swooning chickens or chickens laying piles of eggs in one go. It's scarcely the stuff of split sides. Nevertheless, the cartoon was nominated for an Academy Award. No doubt the Sinatra and Bing Crosby caricatures were funnier back in the heyday of both performers. Indeed, the funniest part of 'The Swooner Crooner' in the rooster auditions in which we see a variety of caricatures of such performers as Jimmy Durante and Cab Calloway. The plot on which these caricatures are hung, however, is paper thin and the final gag is particularly strange and grotesque.

In the only Porky Pig cartoon to receive an Oscar nomination, filmdom's most famous swine owns a farm and has the hens lay eggs all day - to the tune of (what else?) Raymond Scott's "Powerhouse" - but the hens get distracted by a crooning rooster. But when Porky hires another rooster to woo the hens back, the whole ordeal really turns into a battle of wits.An obvious aspect of "Swooner Crooner" is that it's truly a product of WWII, what with the clear allusion to Rosie the Riveter. But of course, they parody singers like Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra. Yeah, those guys may have been really popular in those days, but I just bet that most people in my generation believe that BC and FS deserved to get mocked as brutally as possible.OK, so I don't know whether or not I can speak for every member of my generation. But I can say that this is a really funny cartoon. It got included in Leonard Maltin's "Bugs and Daffy: Wartime Cartoons".