Must See Movie...

Boring

The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

. . . in this Great Depression Era Looney Tune, PORKY AND TEABISCUIT. Every American is born with an equal ownership stake in the First Necessity of Life, Air. When you divide the current U.S. Population of around 333.3 million into the 2016 estimated cumulative value of all OTHER American Assets (now $997 trillion), it makes each citizen's air share worth about $3 million. Since the Greedy Trumpsters have diminished the quality of each normal citizen's birthright by about 97% with their money-grubbing pollution smokestacks, their lucrative fuming freight trucks, their natural gas vented burn-offs, their reeking chemical plants, their tankers full of liquefied manure fertilizers, and the full spectrum of Death Rays radiating out from their monopolies on poorly-insulated power lines, cell phone towers, and satellite TV broadcasts, every Genuine American needs to be presented with a $2.91 million compensation check on their 18th birthday. Otherwise, TEABISCUIT tells us, our $10,000 (before adjusting upwards for inflation) Life Race Prize will be reduced by $9,989 (or 99.9%) by the time the Trumpster Cheats deduct "their cut," simply because they're second, third or tenth generation Robber Barons and they own the U.S. Government.

Ben Hardaway and Cal Dalton's 'Porky and Teabiscuit' is an utterly pedestrian cartoon which, after Bob Clampett's barrage of amazing Porky Pig cartoons the previous year, seems like a step backwards. Casting Porky in his original role as a child, the clichéd plot unfolds slowly and uninterestingly as we follow Porky on an errand for his father which results in him being conned out of eleven dollars in exchange for a dishevelled old nag of a racehorse. Porky must enter a steeple chase to win back the money. The cartoon only picks up pace when the race begins and by then the cartoon is nearly over. It's far too little, too late and 'Porky and Teabiscuit' emerges as a misfire that seems unsure whether to go for cuteness or gags and ends up skimping on both. Unlike the majority of the Warner Bros. catalogue which is noticeably adult orientated, 'Porky and Teabiscuit' feels like a short made specifically for children and easily entertained children at that!

Following his debut in the 1935 Merrie Melody "I Haven't Got a Hat", Porky Pig mostly starred in hokey Looney Tunes until the early 1940s (Chuck Jones's "Old Glory" may have been Porky's only cartoon during this period that constituted anything more than a series of childish gags; I think that it was also Porky's only appearance in Merrie Melody during this period)."Porky and Teabiscuit" was one of the hokey ones. While it did follow the theme of casting Porky as the underdog, it doesn't have much clever. Not that it isn't worth seeing (there are a few neat gags). But I suspect that most people will agree that if Leon Schlesinger Productions hadn't started giving Porky roles with greater complexity, then that would have quickly been all for him, folks. This one is OK, not great.PS: directors Cal Dalton and Ben Hardaway headed what had been Friz Freleng's unit. Freleng worked at MGM from 1937 to 1939, returning to Warner Bros. when MGM canceled the series that he had been directing. Ben Hardaway's nickname was Bugs, and he submitted a drawing of a rabbit titled "Bug's Bunny". You can probably guess what happened from there.

This short is one of the earlier Porky Pig shorts and falls into the "Porky as a kid" category, which was a fairly frequent gimmick in the first few years. There may be spoilers in my remarks below: In a few Porky shorts featuring Porky as a child, the plot device of "Porky is given money by his dad, with strict orders to do something specific, but something goes haywire" was used. This was one of those shorts, which are fairly predictable. Our hero winds up buying (by Standard Accident # 43 in the Cartoonist's Handbook) a horse which would fail the physical at a glue factory. Given that our hero doesn't relish the idea of returning home for a trip to the woodshed, he decides to enter a race to win the prize money, so he can go home covered in glory rather than fertilizer.Our hero lucks out, in spite of troubles, travails and trombones, passes "Go", collects his $11 and his horse is happy in the end as well and on his way to audition for John Philip Sousa.This short is on Looney Toons Golden Collection, Vol 3. Though it's largely a routine and by-the-numbers cartoon, it is worth seeing and the Collection is excellent. Recommended.