Mucho Locos

You heard me right here. Yes, he does win a battle with Speedy Gonzales, when he's not really paying attention. It's basically just a cartoon with clips from previous ones. Personally, I'm not too fond of the Daffy/Speedy cartoons, I'm more fond of the ones with Sylvester. Daffy and Speedy just do not go together IMHO.

Note: The 7 is actually a rounded score. A 6.5 probably would have been more appropriate.

After being ridiculed for imagining a running TV program on a blown out TV set, a young mouse realizes the silliness of what he's doing and is depressed until Speedy comes and cheers him up by telling tales of the "Stupid duck" and the "Smart mouse." Thus resulting in a "clip show" through the broken TV set of previous Speedy/Daffy cartoons (from before they were paired, of course). Daffy, of course, oversees this and is eventually driven past his limit with Speedy's constant portrayal of him as stupid.

As my title suggests, Daffy/Speedy cartoons are a bit of a guilty pleasure for me. Sure, the lower budgets in animation and music stick out, the two characters don't really go together, and Daffy is generally a total jerk in most episodes (especially the earlier ones); but they still manage to be fairly amusing. Partially in a "so bad, it's good" way, partially because there are some reasonably funny jokes in these cartoons. As for Mucho Locos, it's really little more than a clip show with reanimated (yes, reanimated) versions of classic scenes from such shorts as Robin Hood Daffy and Tortilla Flaps (with an unintentionally hilarious example of lazy sound design when El Vulturo's writhing in agony). Admittedly, the whole stupidity of the plot made me chuckle, and Warner Brothers did choose some good "classic scenes." Plus, the ending for this cartoon is priceless.

Overall, not the best Daffy/Speedy short but not the worst either. It's pretty much what you'd expect from the series.

I personally don't think that the Daffy and Speedy cartoons are as bad as people say, true Daffy and Speedy's partnership has never gelled and doesn't make sense, they're often predictable and the animation is far from great(and admittedly their worst outings like See Ya Later Gladiator are down there with the weakest ever Looney Tunes cartoons), but they do have funny moments and Mel Blanc can do no wrong. Mucho Locos is one of their better outings, but not by all means good. It is still rather pointless with no plot to speak of, it's basically just a clip show(which often have little point to them in animation) with some links with Speedy and the boy mouse. The pacing comes to life in the clips but the links not so much and there are moments of repetitive moments with Speedy and the boy mouse. Daffy has next to nothing to do only appearing for the last minute or so with only a few(uninspired) lines, so he and his personality never shine. The animation is not very good outside of the clips shown-where the difference in quality is obvious and somewhat jarring- looking very flat and sparse. And while it is nice and not cheap-sounding, the music does feel bland and lacking in energy.

However, Mel Blanc's voice work is fine, Speedy is thankfully more restrained and quite caring and the boy mouse is not too cloying. Their rapport is quite cute as well. The cartoons featured are entertaining in their own right- the best of the six being Robin Hood Daffy- with mostly great animation and funny writing and gags(apart from maybe Tortilla Wraps the gags featured are highlights in their respective cartoons), the ones with Daffy as the lead are though much better than the ones with Speedy(which are still better than almost all of the Daffy/Speedy outings), outside of them Mucho Locos is rather dull and lacking. What's more they are well-incorporated and tie in nicely with the interplay introducing them. And the end gag, the only moment outside the clips in Mucho Locos that actually feels like a gag, is agreed priceless. It was refreshing also to see Daffy get the upper hand here instead of being defeated like he does in a lot of his cartoons, overall too not just with Speedy. To conclude, you do question what the point of Mucho Locos is but you can do with far worse, there are far worse Daffy/Speedy cartoons(See Ya Later Gladiator, A-Haunting We Will Go, Speedy Ghost to Town and Rodent to Stardom). 5/10 Bethany Cox