Rough and Tumbleweed

Inspector willoughby was an interesting character. He'd appears before as a side character and was used to great lengths in the shorts he appears in before. However, he only really works as a side character. Despite that, his first official solo short isn't bad at all. It's almost a good short, although it somewhat falls short. First off, animation is solid. Les Kline, La Verne Harding, & Ray Abrams all do a great job, worth their animation being smooth and appealing. The backgrounds fit the Wild West theme well, though they're not terribly detailed. The real meat and potatoes come from Pretty Boy McCoy and Willoughby. Their chemistry works really well, and the beginning conflict is paced well, too. However, after the gag with the safe, Willoughby just sort of disappears for the rest of the short. He works well when he randomly appears and did crazy things nonchalantly, but here he sort of is reduced to a real side character. Although the ending was really funny. Nonetheless, a decent start to a cartoon series.

. . . Universal presents Professor or Doctor or Inspector or Agent Willow Bee as an equally blase dead-pan hang-dog self-assured confident omnipotent space-shifting operative. During ROUGH AND TUMBLEWEED, Willow Bee again plays fast and loose with the Fourth Wall, making snide remarks directly to his viewers, if any. Pretty Boy McCoy is no relative of Floyd the Demon Barber of May-Berry Street, damaging himself with his violent tendencies more than the Pinkerton-type sleuth persistently stalking him. This dogged pursuit continues through the close of the picture. Droopy would be impressed. Or not.