Swing Shift Cinderella

Well, if you're in the mood for a Tex Avery cartoon, I highly recommend this one! It starts with Little Red Riding Hood being chased by the wolf as they run pass the title of this short. Then they stop and look at that before the wolf shushes Red away and changes to a tux! So the story switches gears to the title character and the Fairy Godmother being at home wearing glasses drinking herself a glass...I'll just now mention the gags come fast and furious which should not surprise anyone familiar with Avery's work. Perhaps the highlight is the "Oh, Wolfy!" number performed by the title character as she does moves that make the Wolf very horny! That sequence, by the way, was reused in Avery's later cartoon Little Rural Riding Hood which I reviewed on this site years before. I'll just now say I highly recommend Swing Shift Cinderella!

The Big Bad Wolf stops chasing Little Red Riding Hood. Instead, he starts chasing Cinderella. Fairy Godmother intervenes. This is a more adult theme cartoon. It's Tex Avery with the Wolf and that happens a lot sometimes. He's a more dangerous Pepé le Pew. I wouldn't mind more expressions from Cinderella but she is basically the super hot Instagram model. This is fun but not necessarily for kids.

Another Tex Avery howling wolf cartoon. It's clever and hyped to the hilt. In this one, the wolf is the object of affection and it is played well. There is the usual eye popping. Since it's wartime, Cinderella is worker for the effort. Well done bits, especially with the Fairy Godmother.

Let's face it. Tex Avery was a one of a kind director of animated shorts. The best thing that could happen to his career was being fired by Leon Schlesenger at Warner Brothers. This allowed Avery to migrate over to M-G-M to direct a series of frantic, fast paced animated shorts for Fred Quimby. Swing Shift Cinderella was probably the best of the batch (or at least among the best, at any rate). The plot has the wolf tiring of chasing Little Red Riding Hood,only to want to pursue Cinderella (a lounge singer/assembly line worker). As in any Avery short,there is no lack of visual gags (which can run from the truly silly to outright surreal). The short manages to get some good use of mish mashing the whole Cinderella/Little Red Riding Hood plot line (with Hood's grandmother tossed in for good measure). Thankfully, Avery's animated shorts exist on a series of DVD's, for future generations to enjoy (about the only thing will be the countless WWII references and in jokes that will go sailing right over their heads).

...not exactly for sensuality and not comfortable humor, but for lovely freshness. The smart irony, the great fairy godmother and the poor wolf are the precious pieces of a lovely animation who, scene by scene becomes the most realistic of the post - war American realities, from the expectations and dreams to the pragmatic pespectives.