Admirable film.

Funny, strange, confrontational and subversive, this is one of the most interesting experiences you'll have at the cinema this year.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

This was the final solo cartoon starring Porky Pig, and fittingly, it is also one of his most surreal. The whole thing is a dream (or is it?) where Porky goes into the Daliesque world he inhabited in Bob Clampett's 1938 classic PORKY IN WACKYLAND, only with an Irish bent to it this time around. The short is also satirizing the Hans Christian Andersen story, THE RED SHOES, which had recently been adapted for the screen, in 1948, by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger when this cartoon went into production. The Leprechauns popped up later in the audience watching the basketball game in SPACE JAM. Porky would go on to be teamed with Daffy or Sylvester throughout the golden age, but never again as a solo performer.

Wearing of the Grin, The (1951) ** 1/2 (out of 4) It's a dark and stormy night so Porky Pig tries to get shelter inside a dark castle but he turns into a couple leprechauns who think he's there to steal their gold. This has never been one of my favorites and this latest viewing just affirmed that for me. The thought of Porky going up against a couple leprechauns should have made for some great entertainment but that's not the case here as we only get a couple small laughs. The whole gimmick of the two leprechauns coming together as one was an interesting idea but not enough is done with it. The same could be said about the joke dealing with the dancing shoes. Even Porky himself doesn't have too much to do. Considering it only runs 7-minutes you're going to stay entertained but there's so much better out there.

Chuck Jones's 'The Wearing of the Grin' is a genuine oddity. While he would ultimately utilise Porky Pig brilliantly as Daffy Duck's sidekick in several genre spoofs, Jones seems here to be struggling to find a use for a character whose personality doesn't extend far beyond his stutter. 'The Wearing of the Grin' largely eschews gags in favour of a creepy atmosphere and a sense of the surreal. Caught in a storm, Porky seeks refuge in an old castle where he encounters a pair of Irish leprechauns. While the strange sense of otherness is well evoked, 'The Wearing of the Grin' fails to generate that much interest. This is due largely to the boring characters of the leprechaun antagonists. The short build to a brief surreal set piece in which Porky is pursued by a pair of shoes. This is undoubtedly the high point of the cartoon yet it falls short on inventiveness and is ultimately quite dry. This sense of disappointment is compounded by a predictable and unfunny climax. All in all, 'The Wearing of the Grin' is notable for its unusualness but has little else to recommend it.

In The Wearing of the Grin, Porky is stuck in a haunted house in Ireland inhabited by a couple of leprechauns. They attempt to banish the pig to wearing green shoes because they think he's going to steal their pot-o-gold. Another very amusing short directed by Chuck Jones and written by Michael Maltese. The music here is not by Carl Stalling but Eugene Poddany who would eventually do the scores of Jones' cartoons for MGM. Loved the way Porky dances whenever he's wearing the shoes. Highly whimsical dream sequences also abound near the end. This is on disc 2 of Vol. 1 of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection on DVD. If you're a big animation fan, I highly recommend you check that out.