Chilly's Cold War

Chilly Willy's best cartoons were perfect examples of how a potentially one-joke character and concept could end up actually being a perfect mix of the cute and the funny with a lot of colour and good comic timing to go with it.

Smedley makes a welcome return after a run of Chilly being paired with Maxie, which were a mix of good and average, but sadly he deserved a much better return than 'Chilly's Cold War'. He and Chilly are good characters and love their chemistry together, but, while he and Chilly come off well and their chemistry stopping the cartoon from being worse, the material is not worthy for them. Generally, 'Chilly's Cold War' is one of the weaker Chilly Willy cartoons, certainly towards the bottom of the Chilly and Smedley pairings. It is hard to believe that this is the same director that was responsible for Chilly's debut cartoon.

Chilly is adorable and is also a lot of fun, with his actions speaking far louder than words. Prefer him when silent but he still makes an impression even when speaking sparingly. He may be a nuisance to his opponents but he wins the viewer over with his cuteness and timing. Smedley shows perfectly why he and Chilly Willy work so well together, and Daws Butler does a good job as to be expected.

Walter Greene's music is lively and rousingly, cleverly and beautifully orchestrated and fits very well. Love the opening title credits music. The ending is very sweet and the colours and backgrounds actually look good at the beginning.

However, the animation is scrappy. Despite some nice colours it's very simplistically detailed and even more carelessly drawn. Smedley also looks odd here. Colonel Pot Shot is reduced to a bland and underused variation of other boss characters of Smedley, and has lost his comic timing and the conflict doesn't register particularly strongly.

Usually in a Chilly Willy cartoon, many of the gags are fun and solidly timed (not in all cases though), some like in the two Tex Avery cartoons (the two best Chilly Willy cartoons) are very inventive in timing and hilarious, even with obviousness and a lack of variety. The gags here are very tired, predictable and repetitive, being re-treads of similar gags done much better, and the timing is pretty dull particularly in the first half.

The story is also one of the thinnest and most formulaic Chilly Willy cartoons, with almost every part of it done before and better in previous cartoons of his. Chilly's voice is still too much of a mismatch.

All in all, the return of Smedley promised a lot but this left me cold. 4/10 Bethany Cox