A Broken Leghorn

The last Foghorn Leghorn short of the 1950s is this middling effort from Robert McKimson. This one's about Foghorn being jealous of a baby rooster he's afraid will take his place. So Foghorn tries one thing after another to get rid of him but everything predictably backfires. Not much fun. The little rooster is no Henery Hawk or Egghead, Jr. He's kind of annoying actually. Miss Prissy is wasted after an opening that made it look like she would be a bigger part of the cartoon. The music and voice work are solid. The animation is nice. Not terribly impressive, mind you, but not bad either. There are a couple of amusing lines but it's not a very funny cartoon. The biggest problem is that you see the outcome of every gag and situation coming from a mile away. Maybe if the little rooster had been more interesting it would've made up for the predictability, but he isn't.

Robert McKimson's 'Broken Leghorn' is a late entry into the Foghorn Leghorn series and it shows. A lumpy, ugly and largely unfunny cartoon, 'Broken Leghorn' is one of the rooster's lesser films. Beginning with Foghorn making a gallant gesture to stop the other chickens taunting the austere Miss Prissy, 'Broken Leghorn' pulls a u-turn when a newly hatched rooster drives Foghorn to repeatedly attempt infanticide. It's a nice (if slightly harsh) little idea but there's so much wrong with the execution. For one, the baby rooster is obviously a feeble recreation of Henery Hawk but unattractively designed and nowhere near as amusing. The gags are often painfully predictable (the landmine gag in particular) and even Mel Blanc's voice characterization seems a little off as if even he could tell the cartoon was a dead loss just by reading the script. With none of the energy of the best Foghorn cartoons, 'Broken Leghorn' is a disappointingly lifeless entry in the series.

I do like Foghorn Leghorn a lot, but A Broken Leghorn while decent in its own way is not one of his best. The cartoon is too short, the story is formulaic(like a lot of Foghorn's cartoons) and the landslide gag I agree was very predictable. Also, while the little rooster is amusing, his character design does have a tendency to be a tad unattractive, and some of the pace could have done with a kick. That said, the animation mostly is not bad, I did like the colours, how Foghorn Leghorn was drawn and the background art had its fluidity. The music gives the cartoon some energy, and the dialogue with Foghorn's faring best is witty and funny. There are some gags that do work, especially the why the chicken crossed the road one. Mel Blanc excels with the vocals too. So overall, it was decent, but something was missing. 6/10 Bethany Cox

Poor Foghorn Leghorn. That blustery yokel of a rooster always tries to be the most important character on the farm, but someone always outsmarts him. Usually, Henery Hawk and Barnyard Dog enjoy this luxury, but "A Broken Leghorn" features neither of them. Instead, there's a newborn rooster who Foghorn thinks is going to replace him. Sure enough, every attempt to eliminate the little guy results in Foghorn getting maimed somehow.

OK, so we can probably predict what sorts of things are going to happen to FL, but it's neat seeing how for some reason he always finds a reason to keep going (sort of like Wile E. Coyote). A pretty funny cartoon.

Roostery. Foghorn makes up neater words than Stephen Colbert does.

Foghorn Leghorn has to help the self confidence of an unattractive hen, but when the egg hatches it's a rooster, whom Foghorn fears will take him job one day. So he sets out to get rid of it. I'm a fan of Foghorn Leghorn, but this is one of his lesser outings and feels more like a Bugs Bunny/ Elmer Fudd short, which is fine for those characters, but doesn't really jibe well with this one. Oh well, they can't all be clear cut winners. This animated short can be found on disc 4 of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume 1 and also has an optional music only track.

My Grade: C+