Love animation, it was a big part of my life as a child, particularly Disney, Looney Tunes and Tom and Jerry, and still love it whether it's film, television or cartoons. Actually appreciate it even more now, with more knowledge and understanding of different studios, directors and animation styles.
Have always had a lot of respect and appreciation for Friz Freleng and his best work is classic status and regarded with fondness by me. His final Rocky and Mugsy cartoon, also featuring Bugs Bunny as a character referencing prohibition agent Eliot Ness, is not him at his best and comes from a period where Looney Tunes' quality was starting to decline as a result of lower budgets and tighter deadlines and the writing similarly started to suffer. He has also done far worse and there are certainly far worse cartoons from the studio from this period.
Spoofing the popular crime drama series 'The Untouchables', 'The Unmentionables' is worth watching, containing enough clever and amusing moments, nice character interaction and neat references to the series and crime media. There is enough evidence here to show why Bugs, in his final cartoon directed by Freleng from the original Looney Tunes era, was and still is so highly regarded as a character in animation and anywhere. Rocky and Mugsy are also fun characters with nice personality trait contrasts, Mugsy's dim-wittedness is not overworked too much and Rocky's tougher, no-nonsense personality contrasts well even if the character is essentially another spoof on gangsters.
There is some witty dialogue that mostly doesn't feel too talky and a lot of sight gags and references that are well-engineered and amusing if not hilarious or especially original. Freleng's visual and directing style is very much recognisable while the character interactions keep the busy action afloat beautifully. Mostly the pace is lively, while Mel Blanc's voice work is spot on. Ralph James, in a rare instance of another voice actor other than Blanc being credited in a Warner Brothers cartoon, parodies the frantic narration of Walter Winchell beautifully.
For all those great things, 'The Unmentionables' has its short-comings. It is more amusing than hilarious and the material can lack originality and like the studio were re-working older material. The pace occasionally could have done with more kick, like at the start.
Animation quality was much more refined before, not as much care or imagination here, not as much detail in the backgrounds which were sparse in places or as vibrant in the colours. Bill Lava was responsible for the score here, and, while his scoring was far cheaper and ill-fitting in later offerings of his, there is not as much lushness or energy as seen with Milt Franklyn and especially Carl Stalling, who did much better adding to the action and enhancing it.
Overall, worth watching and hardly unmentionable but not a must watch. 6.5-7/10 Bethany Cox
