A Bird in a Guilty Cage

Another fun Sylvester & Tweety short. This one's directed by Friz Freleng and takes place in a department store. One night Sylvester is happening by when he sees Tweety in the window (Special Bird and Cage - $19.50). Tweety's singing away ("Ain't She Tweet") and being adorable as usual. Sylvester, of course, becomes obsessed with making the canary his next meal and proceeds to try one thing after another to make that happen. It's a typical short for the series but very funny with some good gags and lines. The animation is colorful with well-drawn characters and backgrounds. Excellent voice work from Mel Blanc. Lively music from Carl Stalling. Probably not going to make any top ten lists for the duo but a solid effort nonetheless. I'm sure most fans will like it.

I almost always laugh when a cartoon character turns to us, the audience, and makes a remark. Early in this animated short, Sylvester, turns and whispers to us, "How naive can you get?" That's after Tweety is asking him what he wants as the cat reaches into the cage, trying to steal him from the front window at "Stacy's" Department Store.

Also funny, and usually taken for granted by us viewers, is the music. I liked the violin strings being plucked each time Sylvester would tiptoe around that department store front window and then in the main store as he stalked Tweety (who had flown away just before being eaten as a sandwich).

There are the normal amount of great sight gags in here, such as Sylvester making a ladder out of mannequins and then becoming part of the mannequin, or the goofy cat trying on women's hats or the chase through the doll house.

This is very entertaining all the way with great gags and great music.

Sylvester Cat sees Tweety in the window of a department store and decides to sneak in to catch and eat the bird. I hate Tweety's singing (he only seems to know two songs, which he alternates in every single damn short that he's ever in) I hate Tweety's way of talking with that speech impediment of his. Yes you could say with certainty that I am NOT a big fan of Tweety in the least bit. Give me Wile E., Road Runner, Bugs, Daffy, Porky, Foghorn leghorn, or pretty much any other character and I'll be happy. But not Tweety bird. At the end Sylvester crosses birds off his list of things he wants to eat. If only this was the last of the Tweety cartoons *sigh* This animated short can be seen on Disc 3 of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume 2 and also features an optional Music & effects only track.

My Grade: C-

OK, maybe Tweety does get a little annoying sometimes - despite the fact that he started off as a near sadist in his debut - but I really liked the scene in "A Bird in a Guilty Cage" when Sylvester runs into the display of French bathing suits: given the sound that he made, we can probably at least guess how the bathing suits looked! Especially for a lonely guy like him.

Yeah, I know, it's pathetic to focus on a single scene and ignore the rest of the cartoon. Well, it seems like most of the Sylvester/Tweety pairings follow the same plot line, so even the slightest deviation catches my eye. Therefore, I wish to assert that this cartoon is worth seeing just for that one scene.

Chuck Jones's Bugs Bunny short 'Hare Conditioned' showed what a rich source of gags a chase through a big department store could be. Friz Freleng's 'A Bird in a Guilty Cage' manages to squander all these opportunities, however, by succumbing to one of the major problems of the Sylvester and Tweety series: it simply replays a lot of old gags in a different setting. The script for 'A Bird in a Guilty Cage' is particularly weak, failing to punctuate any of the gags with a funny line or routine. Many of the gags are poorly executed, such as the muted response Sylvester has to the potentially funny scene in which he shoots off one of his fingers. By the time of 'A Bird in a Guilty Cage', the Tweety and Sylvester series was into double figures and running out of what little steam it had yet it would continue for dozens more episodes, many as weak as this tedious offering. Like Speedy Gonzalez in later cartoons, Tweety is a feeble character who manages to drain all the potential from the usually superb Sylvester.