Bye, Bye, Blackboard

Was very fond of Woody Woodpecker and his cartoons as a child. Still get much enjoyment out of them now as a young adult, even if there are more interesting in personality cartoon characters and better overall cartoons.

That is in no way knocking Woody, because many of his cartoons are a lot of fun to watch (almost all of them being in his prime era of the 1940s through to the mid-50s) and more and also still like him a lot as a character. 'Bye, Bye, Blackboard' is Woody Woodpecker's final theatrical cartoon and, while it is much better than the previous cartoon 'The Genie with the Light Touch', considering Woody had such a strong start he deserved a much better final cartoon and the decline is so glaringly obvious.

'Bye, Bye, Blackboard' has good things, even the worst Woody Woodpecker cartoons even when disappointing had redeeming qualities. The music score is bouncy, energetic and very lushly orchestrated, not only synchronising and fitting with the action very well but enhancing it.

Mrs Meany has amusing moments and lives up to her name, and the dog Alfie steals the cartoon and the conflict between him and Mrs Meany is more interesting that between her and Woody. There are some amusing moments here.

However, Woody compared to his original manic personality is just too subdued and his material is too obvious and safe, one misses the manic energy and the risk taking. He has his moments but compared to his prime era it's just not the same.

Likewise with the humour, which although with some amusing moments just feels tired and lacking in variety, timing also could have been sharper and the laughs could have been more consistent and more in quantity. The story also lacks freshness and the viewer is a couple of steps at least ahead of the cartoon the whole time.

Certainly, the story was rarely a strong suit in even the good-and-more Woody Woodpecker cartoons but they had much more energy and variety and Woody had a far more interesting personality. That 'Bye, Bye, Blackboard' and many other 60s onward Woody Woodpecker cartoons generally lack those things makes it far less easier to forgive.

Just as problematic is the animation quality. Time and budget constraints shows in a lot of the animation, which is very rushed looking in the drawing and detail wise it's on the simplistic and careless side like many of Woody's cartoons from this period continuing through to the 60s.

Overall, watchable but disappointing final cartoon for Woody Woodpecker. 5/10 Bethany Cox

This is the last Woody Woodpecker short produced by Walter Lantz -- he shut down the studio after discovering that it would take ten years for the 1972 slate of cartoons to turn a profit and threw in the towel.. Fifty-nine years in the industry -- his first recorded credit is from the 1913 Bray cartoon COLONEL HEEZA LIAR IN Africa: fifty-four as a producer and forty-two as his own boss. So he retired to paint for another twenty-two years. Good for him.

It was time, and not just on financial grounds. This cartoon about how Woody and his dog deal with a mean teacher is okay, but the drawings are reduced to colored-in lines and the animation is just a step above TV animation at this stage: everything moves appropriately, but anything that doesn't absolutely have to move doesn't. It's a great fall from Lantz' glory days of the 1940s and the great Woody Woodpeckers directed by Seamus Culhane. Time to move on.