Gone Batty

This 1954 "Looney Tunes" short from 1954 called "Gone Batty" is one fun, cute, and memorable cartoon as it pays tribute to baseball and winning the right way. A baseball game is being played and the tough rough Greenville Goons are hammering and bending rules with the slow and overmatched Sweetwater team. Never fear a baby elephant named Bobo enters the game and proves he can play ball! The animation is bright and colorful, and the short is clever as this little elephant is smart in his ways to pull out a victory! Overall enjoyable and well remembered cartoon one of Looney's best.

Clearly, the Termite Terrace crowd always liked to find ways to put wacky spins on everything. It seems like sports were a prime target, as "Screwball Football", "Porky's Baseball Broadcast", "Baseball Bugs", "My Bunny Lies Over the Sea" and "Gone Batty" identify. This one portrays a baseball game between a big, aggressive team, and a small, pitiful team. While it looks pretty one-sided at first, the small team throws a wrench in the works by having their elephant mascot play.

I at first got the feeling that Warner Bros. used this cartoon in their Looney Tunes compilation film "Bugs Bunny's Wild World of Sports", but that baseball sequence didn't feature an elephant. Oh well. This is still a pretty funny cartoon, if not the funniest. Robert McKimson and his cohorts obviously just wanted to have fun (apologies to Cyndi Lauper). Maybe working for peanuts isn't as bad as we might expect.

This is not the best of McKimson's animated shorts, I feel it is too short and one or two parts felt rushed. However, I loved the humour, the gags are plentiful and come by thick and fast, and there is some hilarious dialogue including the what I call classic quotes "there is nothing in the rule book saying elephants can't pitch, so PLAY BALL!" and "that was a strike...WHAM!...I don't like you". The animation is very colourful and vibrant with very nice colours and backgrounds and the characters are decently drawn, the music is energetic as you would expect from Carl Stalling, BoBo the elephant is so adorable and Mel Blanc's voice work is superb. All in all, very funny and enjoyable.8/10 Bethany Cox