Odor-Able Kitty

Pepe Le Pew can either really creep you out or totally sweep you off your feet. Either way, you can't help feeling a little awe on beholding this classic WB character. This commentater personally believes that Pepe was the inspiration behind other would be animated casanovas today from Cartoon Network's "Johnny Bravo" to Disney's Lumiere from "Beauty and the Beast".

His unique brand of love making is to be wondered at in today's world where his antics would normally be slapped with a sexual harassment warrant and at least a 50m distance from all his victims.

In this particular cartoon, a world weary cat decides to do an ultimate makeover and earn some respect for a change for pretending to be a skunk. All goes well, until Pepe arrives and promptly pursues the unfortunate feline with his overwhelmingly enthusiastic love-making.

The groundwork for Pepe's many trademarks are laid in this cartoon. From his adorable "frenchified" love calls to that aggravatingly calm hop-chase of his.

This cartoon only goes to show that as far as the world of cartoon fantasy is concerned, the most ardent wooer can go the distance...and have his beloved "pig-eon" leaving dust trails behind them.

Fed up with being kicked from one house to another, and being bullied by dogs and shopkeepers, a cat decides the only way to get rid of others is to pretend to be a skunk. However when she does, she suddenly gets a great deal of unwanted attention from a certain amorous skunk.

Although this film is not that original in terms of the main character, I still enjoyed it a great deal. The film looks like it will be about the cat but, when the cat says `I will paint myself like a skunk' you immediately know where this is going. From that point on it goes the usual way but still manages to be funny and a little bit fresher than it often can be. Jokes involving Bugs Bunny and the `real' Pepe are both a little different and funny enough to lift the usual chase material.

Pepe is good despite him just doing his usual one trick routine. The cat is a better character than the usual cat that Pepe chases - this one has a bit of character and some good lines and actions.

Overall, this film will annoy those who simply don't like Pepe but it is different enough to surprise those people who, like me, just find it hard to get past the fact that he usually only has one joke in him. This is not perfect but it is fresher and funnier than many of Pepe's films.

Pepe Le Pew is not one of my favourites, but he is a likable character and the sort that you appreciate much more as an adult. Odor-able Kitty is his debut, and is a very credible one. Okay, it is different to what we are used to from Pepe, perhaps there is a notion of not quite finding their feet yet- which is natural when it comes to debuts- and Pepe does look a little awkward here. On the other hand, the animation on the whole is very good, perhaps not as elegant as the later Pepe cartoons but it has a nice style to it. The music is typical Carl Stalling, the orchestration is lush and there is so much characters that proves a vital part of the humour. The dialogue has the freshness and wit that you'd expect from Looney Tunes, the cat bags the best lines actually. The gags, the best being the ending, are clever and imaginatively timed. Pepe is memorable for a first outing, though not as amorous or witty as he would be later, while the cat is a strong support character that I like even better than Penelope. Mel Blanc's(with his Pepe as ever sounding eerily like Maurice Chevalier) vocal characterisations don't disappoint. All in all, a more than credible debut, even if there was better to come. 8/10 Bethany Cox

. . . controversial piece of animation given the dread snipping of the ubiquitous censor bots employed by this site. Compounding this travesty, these evil bots are totally clueless--they give commentators absolutely no tips as to how a review can be modified to pass their incomprehensible scrutiny. Perhaps merely typing in the title of what is being reviewed constitutes an unforgiveable transgression in their dim eyes, as some of the outside discussion threads suggest. Maybe it is the use of certain forbidden words, which could share a syllable or letter with something on their E-list. Possibly exceeding the bot limit on words of six letters or more is enough to do in a "user review." Only The Shadow knows.

. . . "A rose by another name would smell just like a skunk." We went to the zoo yesterday, but all the skunks from last summer were gone. The zookeeper who gave me a lift to the gift shop at closing time informed me that menagerie personnel had live-trapped and removed most if not all of the stinkers this spring. Be that as it may, only the most hopeless maggot would refer to the Warner Bros. White striper as anything other than "Henry," or perhaps "Hank." This malingering miscreant's pathetic attempts to avoid child support payments while pursuing inter-species relationships beyond the pale of acceptable behavior leaves Hank in a weak position as a permanent butt of crude jokes.