Cheese It, the Cat!

The principal gag in this one is that the two lead characters -- who are mice -- are drawn and voiced as Ralph Kramden and Ed Nortion (Jackie Gleason and Art Carney) from THE HONEYMOONERS. There had been several Termite Terrace efforts in this vein, including A TALE OF TWO KITTIES (Abbot & Costello, the introduction of Tweety Bird) but McKimson brings little to this but the conceit.

Although a very competent cartoon director, Robert McKimson suffers a bit because Friz Freleng and Chuck Jones, who ran the other two cartoon units at Warner Brothers in this period, were geniuses. I have the impression that he wanted to move to live action directing, as had ex-Schlesinger cartoonist Frank Tashlin (and earlier, Gregory LaCava), but never got the chance.

Cheese it, The Cat! is a nice enough cartoon. However, in my view it is nothing particularly memorable either. The animation is quite good, the characters are drawn well and the colours and backgrounds are attractive. The music is energetic and tongue in cheek, the characters are likable and Daws Butler's voice work is outstanding. Mel Blanc as the cat is also good, while he only has one line excluding the numerous meows and such he is required to me, he does do something fun with it. On the other hand, the story is rather predictable and thin, and one or two of the gags had the sense you knew what was going to happen. The writing was decent and the gags in general are interesting, but they aren't particularly funny in my opinion. The funniest Cheese it, the Cat! gets is the last thirty seconds, and those last thirty seconds are actually very amusing. All in all, nice but somewhat unmemorable apart from the last thirty seconds and the voice work. 6/10 Bethany Cox