Tweety's S.O.S.

Funny, yes. A Freleng classic! To watch Sylvester turn green is always a treat, and it brings us back to the days when cartoon slapstick was brave and geared for the adult mind.

Loved it!

Wonderful Sylvester and Tweety short directed by Friz Freleng. This one's pretty much a textbook example of the series and would probably serve well as a great introduction to these characters for anyone who hasn't seen them before. The plot is simple - Sylvester is starving so he tries to get at Tweety on a cruise ship, only to be repeatedly (and painfully) thwarted by Granny. The animation is very nice with great colors. There are many fun gags and lines with the funniest bit for me being Sylvester's seasickness. Solid voice work from Mel Blanc and Bea Benaderet. Really a great cartoon all around. The ending is a hoot, too.

Sylvester the cat stowaway upon a ship that Tweety bird happens to be on with his owner Granny. Oh I don't even have enough words to convey how much I disdain both the Tweety and Granny characters. They simply are not funny to me and made this short quite the chore to sit through indeed. Sylvester is a great character on his own, but there's only so much he can do when confronted by the sheer awfulness of that accursed bid and senile old witch of a Granny. This animated short can be found on disc 4 of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume 1 and features an optional commentary by Micheal Barrier.

My Grade: D+

Sylvester is hanging around the dock trying to scavenge for food from the bins when he spots Tweety Pie in a cabin on a cruise ship. Sylvester boards the ship to try and catch himself some breakfast but finds getting the bird isn't as easy as he hoped - especially with granny on the case.

Most Tweety Pie cartoons leave me sort of unsure of why they were so big. Tweety himself is always a bit bland and Sylvester quite often just ends up outwitting himself and Tweety just observes at times. Here however Tweety is actually pretty active in terms of moving and running around. The action is all pretty funny and flows well with Tweety having some good actions and delivering gags as opposed to the usual observing.

Sylvester is funny and he does give himself more trouble than he gets from Tweety. Tweety does have a better presence here than he often does, but Granny is a little bit poorly animated but has a better presence as well.

Overall this is a fun cartoon with gags that go beyond just purely physical laughs and has some witty little bits. For once both Tweety and Sylvester are both good characters to the degree that even Granny has a bigger part than normal!

People who say that some of what the Looney Tunes cartoons show is inappropriate for children have apparently forgotten something: they weren't originally intended for children. They were produced for the cinema, to be shown before feature films, and so they could show anything that they wanted. "Tweety's S.O.S." has that bad puddy tat Sylvester finding Tweety aboard an ocean liner and boarding the ship to try and get him. But two things work against Sylvester: Granny is vehemently protecting the canary, and Sylvester easily gets seasick (we don't see him throwing up, but with his green face, they make it perfectly clear that he was doing just that!). And then of course, the seemingly cute Tweety has a bad-ass streak.

It's just great to see how these cartoons weren't afraid to go all out; whatever they thought about showing, they showed. We need to understand that cartoons weren't always supposed to be cute entertainment for children. Really funny.