Freudy Cat

This is the final short to feature Hippety Hopper and Sylvester, Jr. in the classic era. It's a clip show with a mentally unbalanced Sylvester seeing a cat psychiatrist because he's terrified Hopper is out to get him. This thin premise is the excuse to flash back to a few Sylvester & Hippety Hopper cartoons from the past. As was usually the case with these types of cartoons, the old clips are the best parts. The new stuff is crudely drawn and unimpressive. Mel Blanc does what he can with the voices but he's given little to work with. The worst part of it all is the music, a bizarre mishmash of new music from Bill Lava, old music from Carl Stalling, and stock music from Philip Green. It's not pleasant to listen to at all. In fact, in some places the different scores are overlapping and it's enough to make your ears hurt. Also the sound effects in spots is really loud and obnoxious. It's not worth a look unless you are a Sylvester completist or someone who likes pain.

The Sylvester, Hippety Hopper and Sylvester series is mostly very watchable, with three or four great cartoons, some fun ones and a few decent if unexceptional ones. Their last cartoon Freudy Cat was made at a time where the formula was starting to get tired and stretched thin, and to me it is the only one that felt unnecessary and cheap.

Freudy Cat is basically just a clip show with a potentially interesting story linking them together. The three clips used from Who's Kitten Who, Slap-Hoppy Mouse and Cats A-weigh fare much better than the cartoon itself. The animation in all three clips are very nicely done, especially in Who's Kitten Who, and the Slap-Hoppy Mouse and Cats A-weigh clips are positively hilarious, with the former showing the two best gags in that cartoon and the latter containing classic physical interplay between two characters (Who's Kitten Who is just introduction really and is too short but is nice too).

Sylvester is very funny and ruthless in the clips and one really does feel sorry for him in the links, the expressions showing his exhaustion, unbalanced fright and frustrations being beautifully drawn and done, by far the standout of the animation in the non-clip parts. Hippety is very cute and amusing in the clips, especially in the Cats A-weigh one. Mel Blanc does a really good job with the voices, particularly strong as Sylvester even in deeper voice as usual. Sylvester Jnr. however while like Hippety sweet and fun in the clips is a little irritating in the rest of the cartoon with his rambling if well-intentioned dialogue bordering on repetitive, and the psychiatrist is wasted due to the concept being so as well.

While the animation looks good in the clips, it looks somewhat limited in the rest of the cartoon, looking rather flat and rough, apart from Sylvester's expressions, and one does miss the big expressions and visuals displayed so well in the early outings in the series. Bill Lava's music score is very discordant, sounds rather cheaply recorded and lacks energy (it may have been an intentional thing but it just didn't sound right to me), inexplicably some of his scoring replaces the original music in the clips and it just doesn't fit, Carl Stalling and Milt Franklyn both did far better jobs matching Hippety's characteristics and hopping through the music while Lava seemed to have forgotten what cartoon he was writing for. The stock pieces from Phillip Green is much more appealing aurally and fits better when they appear but is stylistically at odds with Lava's scoring.

Oddly enough, the story of the cartoon was a good one, but is spoilt by lacklustre pacing and it doesn't do very much with the idea it had, missing the opportunity of providing an explanation as to why Sylvester had mistaken Hippety for a giant mouse for so long. The ending felt abrupt and was more weird than funny. All in all, an overall decent series of cartoons ends on the weakest of the lot, and not because it's a 'cheater' but because it felt cheap and that there seemed little point to it. 4/10 Bethany Cox