Le grand partage

In this MGM cartoon written by Homer Brightman and directed by Michael Lah, Droopy and Butch are a pair of gold miners. They have never struck paydirt, until today. Now, instead of the share-and-share-alike bonhomie they showed under hardship, Butch wants all the gold, and tries to kill Droopy in various ways. All of which fail, of course.

I'm not sure how Homer Brightman came to write this; his home turf was Walter Lantz' cartoon factory. However, the gags average pretty poor, although there is one excellent one. Nether does the cheap design and execution of the visuals please me.

It was, of course, not really the fault of the cartoon makers; budgets had plummeted so much that they couldn't do good work. But that doesn't make this cartoon any better.

Droopy and Butch strike gold in a mine, and instead of splitting 50/50, Butch wants to get rid of Droopy so he could have it all. Of course, either the adversary has bad aiming or just plain dumb, or Droopy is just downright lucky or too keen, nothing goes according to Butch's plan.

It's basically a very predictable Droopy cartoon and more of the same, though not on a very funny level. Not much laugh-out-loud moments.

Grade C

I always liked Droopy when he appeared at our local theater in the 50's. He is the milquetoast character that really doesn't do much and always comes out on top. He an Butch have worked a mine for 20 years with the idea that if they strike it rich they will share the money fifty-fifty. Of course, when they do, Butch forgets everything good and wants it all to himself. What ensues are a series of efforts to kill Droopy which, of course, backfire.

Love animation, it was a big part of my life as a child, particularly Disney, Looney Tunes and Tom and Jerry, and still love it whether it's film, television or cartoons.

Michael Lah makes his solo-director (having co-directed with Tex Avery on 'Deputy Droopy') debut for a Droopy cartoon, one of the two most notable assets for 'Grin and Share It'. The other being that it's produced in Cinemascope. And it's a very good one and of Lah's six solo-directed it's one of his better ones. It does lack Avery's unique visual style, creativity and wild wackiness but it is still very enjoyable and surprisingly well made, even if at times a little unimaginative in the backgrounds and the story being pretty predictable.

Droopy's personality continues to be very well established and he is very high on the humour and charisma factors. Butch is a great foil, both formidable and entertaining with great comic timing. It is clear who gets the worst of it and who gets the upper hand, but the chemistry between the two is nonetheless golden.

Animation is not as good as Avery's but is at least well drawn and there is some clever use of Cinemascope. A lot of the gags and humour, while not hilarious or original, are still very funny and very well-timed and the dialogue, in a cartoon more dialogue heavy to the usual Droopy cartoon, is very witty.

The voice acting is hard to fault from Bill Thompson. Best of all is the music score. The music, courtesy of Scott Bradley, is lushly and cleverly orchestrated, with lively and energetic rhythms and fits very well indeed.

In conclusion, very good and enjoyable, one of Lah's better Droopy cartoons. 8/10 Bethany Cox

Apparently, this signaled the end of the great Tex Avery directing these cartoons as Michael Lah is billed as the director. Following in Avery's footsteps is a brutal act to follow, but this animated short still had a bunch of good moments and was a good representation of Droopy and the type of cartoons we were used to seeing from Avery. This was an excellent debut for Lah. Overall, he directed a handful of these before calling it quits in 1958. Only a couple of his Droopy cartoons were really good, but this is one of them.

This story immediately has shades of the famous Humphrey Bogart film, "The Treasure Of Sierra Madre," as gold quickly brings greed to the forefront. Butch, Droopy's mining partner for years (according to this story) gives a quick speech about the value of being selfless partners.....until Droopy strikes gold. Then, we hear a different song: "It's all mine!" says the Irish-speaking big mutt.

Droopy reminds him about their "50-50" agreement. In fact, that's the name of their mine: the "50-50 Mine - Share Alike." Butch quickly pulls out a written agreement about the mine being 100 percent the owner of one of them in case of accidental death to the other. You know where he's going with that one. (He's tried this before.)

From that point, we get the familiar gags of Butch trying to kill poor Droopy but everything backfiring on him. One thing that was different in this "new" Droopy is the amount of dialog. Usually, there wasn't much, but there is quite a bit in here. Droopy talked more in here that probably all his previous cartoons combined