Wait a minute. That’s not Hubie and Bertie. That’s Jerry and an unnamed mouse in The Year of the Mouse, a 1965 MGM short.
Both cartoons were directed by Chuck Jones and written by Mike Maltese, so the similarities are not coincidental.
The plot is the same in both. The mouse plants something on the snoozing cat, instigates violence, gets pulled up the chimney, and the cat is left to wonder why he is harming himself.
Mouse Wreckers is a far superior cartoon, with stronger gags, including the one where the mice nail everything on the floor to the ceiling. In The Year of the Mouse, Jerry sneaks a gun into Tom’s hands. The trigger has a string attached, which Jerry tugs before being pulled up the chimney. I like the dry-brush colouring after the gun goes off.
The main difference between the two cartoons is Tom figures out what’s happening, catches and imprisons the mice, thereby winning in the end.
Hey, didn’t this happen in another Jones/Maltese Warners cartoon, too?
Jerry’s mimicking of Tom’s expressions gets stale (Why are these mice picking on Tom anyways?). And almost all Mel Blanc and June Foray do in this cartoon is giggle, an incredible waste of their talents.
The animators on The Year of the Mouse are Ken Harris, Ben Washam, Dick Thompson and Don Towsley, with Maurice Noble and Phil De Guard on the Jones team. Gene Poddany provides an original score.
Enough of this. Let's bring on Hubie and Bertie.
Agreed on this review.BTW Today would've been June's birthday had she still lived.
ReplyDeleteSame here and Happy Birthday to June!
DeleteHubie, Bertie, Claude,The Three Bears, and Wile E. Coyote sans Road Runner were easily the best Jones and Maltese creations.
ReplyDeleteThree bears? Super Genius coyote? Yeah, I'll take those.
DeleteI was shocked to learn that Papa Bear was modeled after Jones' own abusive father!
DeleteWhen I was little, the Hubie and Bertie where thev operate on Claude gave me literal nightmares. On the other hand, House Hunting Mice is one of very favorites.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteRegarding this 1965 MGM short, it just exposes how flawed Jones cartoons were in his later years. His greatest fault? His characters all started losing their distinctive qualities. Look at a picture of Jones at the time and compare them to his characters: They all looked like caricatures of Chuck himself. All of them also began to exhibit the same facial expressions and mannerisms, sleep eyed and eternally smug. Chuck's ego consumed his work. I am not diminishing everything he did at the time: I will always treasure How The Grinch Stole Christmas but a good deal of his output was crippled by his ego. Also, I find it ironic that he excoriated dialogue driven cartoons because that is precisely what he was creating when he directed characters that could speak. In my opinion, his golden years were from 1942 to roughly the late mid to late 1950s. An impressive feat which was greatly aided by his partner in crime, Michael Maltese.
ReplyDelete