Gift Wrapped

Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house. Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. Sylvester gets up on Christmas Day and is eager to unwrap his gifts. He is disappointed with his rubber mouse gift. There is Tweety Bird in a wrapped cage with a label for Granny. Sylvester switches the label and attempts to eat Tweety.

This is a solid Tweety and Sylvester and Granny short. On top of that, this is a solid Christmas short. On top on top of that, I absolutely love Granny smacking their butts like a ketchup bottle. That is always hilarious to me. This is a good short in many ways.

It's Christmas at Granny's house and everything is kind of crazy. Sylvester is trying to eat Tweety, Hector the bulldog is trying to eat Sylvester, and Granny is trying to keep the peace. One of the best Sylvester & Tweety shorts, brought to us by Friz Freleng. The animation is beautiful with really lush colors. The music is lively and fun. The always great voicework from Mel Blanc and Bea Benaderet is a treat. Wonderful characters alternate between being adorable and being hilarious. It's such a good cartoon. Plus it's Christmas-themed so it has that added bonus and even ends with everybody singing a Christmas carol (badly).

This is another winner from the Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume Two, with fantastic artwork that captures the colorful Christmas setting magnificently.

We open with a beautiful depiction of an old house under a snowfall. It's "the night before Christmas and all through the night...."

Sylvester interrupts the calm narrative voice and spits out "oh, goody, Santy Clause has been here and I've been a good pussycat" as he admires all the gifts under the tree. He opens one of them and discovers a rubber mouse, which doesn't exactly thrill him. In seconds, he hears a bird singing "Jingle Bells." It's Tweety in his cage, gift-wrapped "to Granny." Sylvester switches tags and puts "to kitty" on the birdcage instead.

Suffice to say, without spoiling anything, Sylvester is not in Christmas spirit, only wanting to eat Tweety, and when a big bulldog jumps out of another present and eats Sylvester, Granny has to keep on top of things or there will be nothing left of either Tweety or Sylvester.

Granny sums it up best: "Land sakes alive: what a house!"

. . . being swallowed by a slightly larger finned friend, which in turn is gobbled up by a yet more formidable sea creature, and so forth. GIFT WRAPPED trots out this tried and true formula, switching the interminable sequence of fish to multiple montages of a feathered being getting et up by a feline who is then consumed by a bulldog. This whole sequence of events may give young tater tots misconceptions about the basics of food consumption. On the other hand, GIFT WRAPPED is more likely than not to push an impressionable urchin into the Vegetarian Camp just in time to refuse their helpings of Christmas goose and mincemeat pie.

Not their absolute best, Birds Anonymous is a contender for that, but it is one of their best and entertaining. As with almost all Sylvester/Tweety cartoons it is routine, but here it didn't matter because the gags certainly were not and, thanks to how impeccably depicted the holiday season is here(illustrated brilliantly by the very start of the cartoon with the house and the snow), there is a real sense of warm-hearted festive cheer. The animation is crisp and fluid with some of the most vibrant colours of any of the Sylvester/Tweety cartoons. The music is non-stop characterful and very lushly orchestrated, the most clever use being when Sylvester disguises himself as Geronimo. The use of arranged Christmas songs added to the festive mood. The dialogue is very razor sharp and witty, a lot of great lines here from Sylvester and Granny, Sylvester's interjection at the opening narration was priceless. The gags are standard chase and cat wants bird, dog wants cat but again like the story the clever timing and how they don't feel tired or recycled ensures that that doesn't matter in the slightest. The one with Sylvester and Tweety in their Geronimo and Hopalong Cassidy disguises was the most memorable, though Granny being hoisted up by Sylvester's crane accidentally was a funny sight as well. The characters and the chemistry between them also made Gift Wrapped enjoyable, especially Sylvester who does a great job providing the laughs by what he says, what he does but also his facial expressions play a large part. Tweety's not too cutesy but he does have a cute look and has shades of his anarchic personality that was given by him by Bob Clampett, this said Sylvester has always been the funnier and more interesting character. Granny at this time of Looney Tunes sure has a lot of spunk and she is just as funny as Sylvester, while the bulldog plays against Sylvester very well. Mel Blanc voices brilliantly in a way that very few other people could, though Daws Butler is a good narrator and you can't go wrong with Bea Benaderet as Granny(though I am more familiar with June Foray's voice-work for the character). To conclude, truly great stuff and among the best of the Sylvester/Tweety series. 10/10 Bethany Cox