Peck Up Your Troubles

High up in a tree lives a little woodpecker. At the bottom of the tree lives Sylvester the cat who is, as always, hungry. When his first attempts to climb the tree fail, Sylvester tries various other methods to get up there.

Is a Tweety Pie cartoon still a Tweety Pie cartoon when it doesn't actually have Tweety Pie in it? I wonder. But in this case the Tweety Pie role is played by a woodpecker while all the other roles are the same - Sylvester and the Pit Bull dog - and the action is the usual stuff. The jokes are fine and are more about Sylvester than the woodpecker. It's not that different from other stuff you'll have seen but it is still energetic and funny.

Sylvester carries the film on his own without too much difficulty. The dog only shows up occasionally to give him dirty looks and the bird is not as memorable as Tweety. This is not a failing though, I'm not that big a fan of Tweety and didn't feel his absence was a problem here - in a way it meant that film had one less `star' to focus on and the cartoon was able to just let Sylvester have the screen time.

Overall this film does lack any other good characters outside of Sylvester, but it is still funny as he is able to carry the comedy pretty well.

Sylvester is always a funny and interesting character, and makes his cartoons worth watching. Peck up Your Troubles is not an exception, not his best cartoon but a decent and well-done one.

Peck up Your Troubles is very formulaic and routine in terms of story, and the two supporting characters are not as memorable as Sylvester. The dog is underused and the cartoon missed an opportunity to make him more menacing, and while the woodpecker is cute he is little more than a plot device and his material is just amusing at best.

The animation however is very good, with a lot of vibrant colour, smooth drawing (Sylvester is such a well-rounded character in his second cartoon, when most cartoon characters at this stage are mostly only in development stages) and detailed backgrounds. The music by Carl Stalling, with its lush orchestration, lively rhythms and effortless ability to enhance the action, is typically superb, and the same can be said for Mel Blanc's remarkably consistent vocal characterisations.

Sylvester carries the cartoon with ease, with his cunning but ability to take the butt of the laughs hilariously shining even in just his second cartoon. And he is further advantaged by a witty script and well-timed and clever sight gags, not to mention that despite being not all that surprising they are very funny.

All in all, Sylvester has done better but it is a decent early cartoon and showed a lot of promise. 7/10 Bethany Cox