Touches You

The Worst Film Ever

Best movie ever!

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

. . . from the "Sloane Foundation" once again finds Looney Tuner sell-out Friz Freleng filling Elmer Fudd's mouth with coarse garbage promoting job-killing automation in an attempt to brainwash a generation of 10-year-olds, including Donald J. Trumpelstiltskin (whom Elmer Fudd plays by name as his way of rebelling against this Corporate Scam to rig the Looney Tune System). TIME Magazine's Joe Klein reviewed last week's U.S. Presidential Debate for an October issue, declaring that the uncouth Trumpster is still stuck in the 1956 YANKEE DOOD IT World of Donnie-the-Kid. (Since his millions of weak-minded supporters seem like they'd be just as happy to vote for Elmer Fudd as they are backing Trumpenstein or whoever else the Rich People Party dredges up to top their ticket, it will be imperative for a President Gary Johnson or Hillary to carry out mass deportations of this Uppity Know-Nothing Horde to someplace like the Planet Clare.) YANKEE DOOD IT drains away all the goodwill Warner had garnered a decade earlier for its Paean to the Union Label, HOLIDAY FOR SHOESTRINGS. DOOD IT still poses a significant threat to Humanity's Survival.

A completely bizarre short apparently meant to tap into the struggling small businessman market that was watching cartoons at the time and convince them mass production was the solution to all their financial difficulties. It's basically a warped take on the Shoemaker & the Elves story, with Elmer as the king of the elves who sends one of his underlings to find out why the shoemaker is still using elf labor in the 20th Century. He needs to be using human slave labor, not elves! There's also an equally strange subplot about the shoemaker's cat, Sylvester, tricking the elves into saying "Jehoshaphat" because that turns them into mice. The animation is nice and colorful. The music is cheery and upbeat. Good voice work from Mel Blanc, Arthur Q. Bryan, and Daws Butler. It's never funny (intentionally, at least) but there's something weirdly fascinating about it. An interesting curio for sure.

Friz Freleng had previously portrayed the elves-and-shoemaker story with the very impressive "Holiday for Shoestrings" in 1946. This time, he turns the story into something resembling one of those educational films that "Mystery Science Theater 3000" occasionally showed. Specifically, elf king Elmer Fudd tells the outdated cobbler how mass production will improve things (expwaining the pwocess with his funny pwonunciation)...and all the while, Sylvester is looking to turn the elves into mice.OK, so the rise of these kinds of factories in the post-war years justifies this mindset. Unfortunately, the factories later closed down and moved to the Third World, as we saw in "Roger & Me". I see that "Yankee Dood It" was bankrolled by the Alfred P. Sloan (Sloan or Sloane?) Foundation, so they no doubt wanted to extol what they considered American values. Like Chuck Jones's "Old Glory" (in which Uncle Sam teaches Porky Pig the history of the USA), it comes out almost totally devoid of humor.All in all, this cartoon isn't terrible, but it basically comes across as - yes, I'll say it - propaganda. A far better cartoon dealing with this sort of topic is Chuck Jones's MGM cartoon "The Bear That Wasn't". As for Freleng, he rebounded in 1957 with "Birds Anonymous", "Three Little Bops" and "Show Biz Bugs".

The king (voiced by Arthur Q. Bryan) of a team of elves is worried about all the elves missing from his pack and sends one of his remaining elves to retrieve them. The elves are, of course, employed by "the shoemaker." He must somehow retrieve them, and get by the shoemaker's pet Sylvester at the same time. Meanwhile, the elven king drops by and literally gives the shoemaker a lesson in modern business management.In the mid-1950s, Friz Freling was experimenting with pseudo-educational cartoon shorts in much the same vein as the shorts Disney was putting out at around the same time. Yankee Dood-It was probably the best of the bunch, but that's actually saying very little. Sylvester is the obvious comic relief of the cartoon, and aside from his constant attempts at taking advantage of the "Jehosefat" spell (saying "Jehosefat" apparently turns elves into mice), there are absolutely no jokes to speak of. A good third of the cartoon involves the king playing an educational slide show for the shoemaker to teach him how to run his business in the then 20th century. The cartoon's finale is so forced and predictable, it isn't even worth mentioning in "non-spoiler text."Overall, this is a fairly pointless short that seems to be more about Freling trying to do something Disney did a lot better at the same time than doing what he himself does best - which is to make funny, non-PC, non-moralistic cartoons.