Qu'importe le Flocon

I actually felt sorry for poor Sylvester as a mouse, not Tweety, comes out of his hole and torments the poor cat throughout much of this Looney Tunes cartoon. Sylvester is eaten, burned and pounded from head to toe by a sadistic and hungry mouse.

It all begins when Granny gets the word that a blizzard has knocked out the roads to her cabin on top of the mountain. "Oh, flibbertigibbit," says Granny. "My bird and cat will starve up there. I'll have to find a way." (Is fibbertigibbit a word?)

It's calm up at the cabin, however, and - shocking as it may sound - Sylvester and Tweety are lounging together at the fireplace. Sylvester even kisses Tweety! However, the cat hears on the radio that "all roads might be closed for up to six weeks," he panics, says "I'll starve," and starts looking around for food, but all there is available is bird seed. From there, it goes from bad to worse for your always-unlucky cat. At least Tweety gets off the hook, as this mouse comes out of a hole and terrorizes poor Sylvester.

This was entertaining but I didn't find it that humorous. The brutal mouse made the story almost sadistic in nature.

Sylvester and Tweety are trapped by heavy snow in Granny's mountain cabin. Tweety has plenty of birdseed but poor Sylvester is all out of food. I'm not sure if Granny just isn't stocking up on food for him or if he's just eaten it all. Probably the latter although the ending to this one makes you wonder. Anyway, Sylvester naturally decides he will have to eat Tweety to survive while a starving mouse has the same idea about Sylvester. A fun short with nice animation, great music, and lots of funny gags. The mouse's attempts to eat Sylvester are especially good. Tweety is as adorable as ever. He sings "The Song of the Marines" while in a little paper boat, which is just priceless. Some people don't like the Sylvester & Tweety cartoons but I happen to enjoy them. Yeah, they can be repetitive after awhile but most of the Looney Tunes shorts feel that way after you've seen a lot of them.

Grannie comes to a halt in a blizzard as she heads toward her cabin. In the cabin are Tweety and Sylvester, co-existing. Unfortunately, food has run out and all that there is is tons of bird seed. Well, you can imaging. The kicker, however, is a ravenous mouse who torments the poor cat. Sylvester's natural instincts are never given any respect and he has to try to cope with the cruelty done him.

This viewer finds the Sylvester/Tweety cartoons more entertaining than most people do though admittedly they are formulaic and can get repetitive. Snow Business is one of the best of the series and one that even non-fans will love. The animation is indeed excellent, in distinctive Fritz Freleng style, with vibrant colours, detailed backgrounds and fluid character designs. The music has always been one of the main strong points in the Sylvester/Tweety cartoons and with Looney Tunes in general. Few cartoon composers did lush orchestration, lively rhythms and action enhancement better than Carl Stalling(though I do dig Milt Franklin for also Looney Tunes, and Oliver Wallace for the Disney cartoons as well), and the music for Snow Business has all of those and doesn't disappoint at all. The dialogue is some of the wittiest of the series and the gags some of the funniest and most inventive, while the story is perhaps the most original and the cartoon of theirs that isn't formulaic and feels properly like a story, especially with Sylvester and Tweety being friends at the beginning and the whole twist with the mouse. Granny doesn't have a lot to do but Tweety is cute and amusing(have always liked him more than most). Sylvester and the mouse though are much more memorable, Sylvester takes the laughs in a hilarious way yet we feel sympathy for him as well but the mouse manages to even steal the show from under him, demented but just as funny. Some of Snow Business has a weird touch to it but never in a sadistic way, certainly not to the extent that the Gene Deitch Tom and Jerry cartoons did. To conclude, a fabulous cartoon and one of the best of the series. 10/10 Bethany Cox

After the feeble 'A Bird in a Guilty Cage', Friz Freleng finally injected some life into his repetitive Sylvester and Tweety series with the brilliant and novel 'Snow Business'. Owing a good deal of its success to a superbly inventive script by Warren Foster, 'Snow Business' opens with Tweety and Sylvester as the best of friends. Only when they are stranded in a cabin by a snowstorm do the starving cat's thoughts turn to eating his former playmate. A great twist on the straightforward formula, 'Snow Business' has a few more tricks up its sleeve. For one, Tweety remains oblivious of the danger he's in throughout the whole cartoon as Sylvester convinces him that a ride in a boiling hot cooking pot and skating on a greased frying pan are enormous fun. This unusual set-up creates a whole new refreshing dynamic between the cat and bird. The real star of 'Snow Business', however, is a psychotic little mouse who, driven crazy with hunger, decides he wants to eat Sylvester. It is this final bizarre plot twist which pushes 'Snow Business' from great to brilliant and the emaciated little rodents attempts to devour a creature ten times his size are hilarious to watch. 'Snow Business' is, in all probability, the very best of all the Tweety and Sylvester shorts. It's a genuinely funny and odd script brilliantly directed by Freleng.