Tugboat Granny

Sylvester is once again after Tweety, who is on a tugboat piloted by Granny. The cartoon is mostly a series of gags of Sylvester trying to reach the boat and failing. Despite being in the title, Granny isn't in this much. She's only in the opening scene, where she sings an adorable song with Tweety that's impossible to dislike unless you have a severe personality problem. This is the highlight of the short, as the rest is pretty typical stuff. Great voice work from Mel Blanc and June Foray. Good music from Milt Franklyn. The animation is solid and colorful. Most of the gags work fine but none really stand out. Not one of the best Sylvester & Tweety shorts but a fun one nonetheless.

It took me quite a while to come around to this one as a favorite, but there's a helluva lotta animation expertise and comic timing that go into it. High Points Of Animation: Art Davis' virtuosic rendering of Sylvester wrestling with the crab (and the crab's immediate dancing back into the sea); also, just about all of Gerry Chiniquy's work--but especially the seagull sequence, and also the scene of Sylvester waterskiing (for a while I thought this was Davis, but Chiniquy's apparently responsible for the last couple minutes). Pink Panther fans take note: Sylvester's surfing routine here bears a very strong resemblance the the big cat's famous wipeout!

Lesser Sylvester and Tweety is not all bad though, not all people like the series but I personally do get enjoyment from them. Granny has next to nothing to do other than sing the title song and while Tweety is better and has a decent balance of cute and anarchic he is too much of a plot device and doesn't have much that is funny. The animation is not bad and is better than most animation nowadays but for Looney Tunes while colourful and fluid in places, others are a little scrappy and lacking in vibrancy.

The music is typically terrific, it's beautifully orchestrated and rhythmically lively like a vast majority of Looney Tunes cartoons. It also synchronises very well with what's happening with the animation, especially with Sylvester's rowing. The title song is very catchy. The humour is mostly in the visual gags rather than the dialogue, which is not bad either but there's much fresher and wittier elsewhere. The gags are very funny, hilarious even with Sylvester bagging all the best moments. Especially good were with the crab, seagull and Sylvester's two attempts at jumping off the bridge(his scream in the smokestack gag is priceless). It's not everyday where you see Sylvester water skiing either. The anchor destroying the boat gag was a little predictable but still funny. The cartoon is fast-paced and is not too repetitive. Sylvester is great fun here as always and he's easy to root for. Mel Blanc's voice acting while with not very much is characteristically reliable.

All in all, there are better Sylvester and Tweety cartoons but Tugboat Granny is entertaining enough. 7/10 Bethany Cox