Baby Bottleneck

With a baby boom occurring among affluent parents, the storks are unable to cope with the extra work and begin to get behind on orders and make mistakes. Porky Pig is enlisted as the transportation/logistics manager to ensure all delivers are made and Daffy Duck is given the job as his assistant. However the department is so stretched that errors and problems are inevitable.

Opening with an imaginative idea (although it has been done a lot as I write this) the film makes itself better by adding the great characters of Porky and Daffy together, albeit in separate scenes within the same film. The plot allows for plenty of imagination – the production line `making babies' prior to shipping out via stork (or whatever) right down to the scene showing the wrong babies delivered to all the animals!

Daffy is manic but is allowed the edge of bitterness that always made him appear at his best when done just right. Porky is good as well, as are the majority of the support characters no matter how big their role.

Overall this is amusing as it is all quite imaginative and funny. The inclusion of two popular and strong characters just serves to make it funnier and more polished a product.

Maybe there is some unintended bias, seeing as Bob Clampett has a very interesting and wonderfully wacky style that is always a joy to watch.

Daffy is also one of Looney Tunes' most iconic, most interesting and funniest characters and while Porky is sometimes bland on his own and can be overshadowed by supporting characters he is amusing and likable and his partnership with Daffy is always hugely enjoyable. The premise is also a pretty unique one for the time.

Anybody who is a fan of Clampett, Daffy and Porky are more than likely to love 'Baby Bottleneck'. For me, it's one of the best and one of the funniest for all three. The premise is interesting and different, and is executed in a way that constantly entertains and intrigues. The beginning may not work for some people, personally was never alienated by it and thought it was visually clever and fun.

The animation is not only beautifully drawn, very detailed and colourful but there are some really imaginative moments, especially towards the end with the unhatched egg. Carl Stalling always made a great cartoon even better with his music scores, and with its lush and lively orchestration, high energy and character and action-enhancing synchronisation his music for 'Baby Bottleneck' is hardly an exception.

'Baby Bottleneck' throughout is incredibly funny and often hilarious. The mix ups are funny enough, but the highlight is the war over the unhatched egg with a hysterical exchange of dialogue and imaginative visuals. The dialogue is deliciously wild and looney and the razor sharp wit is more than evident too. There are many references here and they are fun to spot and recognise, though they are of the time and may go over the heads of some. The gags are just as fun and inventive, with the distinctive Clampett wackiness.

Daffy is wonderfully manic and bitter, and Porky is a very likable foil and no less amusing. Mel Blanc's voice work is characteristically fantastic, very rarely did this supremely talented man disappoint in his career apart from when even he couldn't salvage some bad material seen in too much of the mid-late-60s output.

Overall, a classic. 10/10 Bethany Cox

Baby Bottleneck is a brilliant short and I found it to be quit entertaining and amusing with also a lot of enjoyably funny characters.

A Stork has been getting a lot of trouble delivering babys and has been getting inexperienced help to make emergency delieveries,so Porky Pig and Daffy Duck takeover,but a lot of trouble happens when an egg has no address and Porky tries to get Daffy to sit on it.

****/*****

4/5 STARS

9/10

-DILLON HARRIS

Bob Clampett's 'Baby Bottleneck' is a satire on the post-war baby boom in which Porky Pig and Daffy Duck run a factory to assist with the preparation and delivery of new born babies. This entails an automated production line which dresses, burps, feeds and dispatches the young animals. For the most part, 'Baby Bottleneck' is a spot gag cartoon with Porky and Daffy simply pulling levers and answering phones. They only get to really do anything towards the end of the cartoon when they get into a war over an unhatched egg. Often when he was assigned spot-gag cartoons, Clampett's wild on-screen energy would be dulled but 'Baby Bottleneck' is an exception and Clampett manages to infuse the quickfire gags with a pulsating vitality. Unfortunately, 'Baby Bottleneck' is full to the brim with long forgotten references which inescapably dates the cartoon and makes it more of a curio than a laugh riot to modern day audiences. There are, however, a couple of typically risqué Clampett gags. Especially conspicuous is a joke with a baby alligator trying to suckle a mother pig. When she finally turns to the alligator the cartoon quickly cuts away before she has chance to speak. The cut line was apparently "Ah-ah-ah, don't touch that dial"!

Usually I never would have suspected that a cartoon would portray the baby boom that occurred after WWII, but "Baby Bottleneck" does just that. It portrays Daffy and Porky working in a baby-producing factory and trying to avoid the glitches that have sent certain infants to the wrong parents. Then, an unidentified egg sends everything haywire.

Aside from looking at the new things going on in the world, I get the feeling that this cartoon may have inspired Fonzie. You see, when Porky picks up the egg, he tells Daffy "Sit on it." In later years, that would become the Fonz's catch phrase.

Oh well, maybe I'm the only person who sees that. The overarching point is, this is a classic cartoon.