It's obvious from the get go that the latest direct to video offering that some serious troubles plauged this project. Produced by the same team that made the "Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries" TV series, we know these guys can do quality work. Sadly, it is not on display here. The video starts off with a contrived plot, when Col. Rimfire (long time nemesis to Cool Cat who was a mid 1960s Looney Tunes character and a favorite cameo in SaTM) challenged Granny (inexplicably in London) that Tweety can out smart 80 cats and fly around the world in 80 days. We also get a subplot that Col. Rimfire fortunes when Granny wins the bet will go to saving an adjecent park. Why the park needs saving is never explained, but doesn't really matter.
This sets off the main body of the video, where Tweety travels from place to place, outsmarting the local cat population and Sylvester to boot. Somehow there is an additional subplot of a London thug wanting to steal Tweety's royal passport. This again is never really developed and seems tacked on. Mostly we have Tweety traveling from place to place and encountering a range of Looney Tunes characters (Bugs and Daffy in the Swiss Alps, Pepe Le Pew in Paris, Pete Puma in Africa, Rocky and Mugsy in Rio de Jenerio and so on). It should also be noted that Lola Bunny makes her first fully animated appearance (as opposed to Space Jam) as a news anchor.
But it is Tweety's travels that the real weakness of the piece shows up. The trip first of all makes no logical order. Tweety is suppose to go from London and back in 80 days. Yet, he goes from London to Switzerland and then back to Paris, then "Africa" to Egypt to Tibet to South America (!) then back to Yokohama then to Australia then to San Francisco to Las Vegas to Pittsburgh to Chicago to New York then finally back to London. This haphazard plotting is made worse by a number of animation mistakes that made it into the final print. Some were covered by ADR. The most noticable example was when Sylvester is chasing Hubie and Bertie (two mice) on a ship. Sylvester gets hit in the face with a frying pan, but after the cut back the frying pan is gone. In the soundtrack you hear Hubie noting, "Don't ask me what happened to the frying pan." The end result is an entirely rushed and under budget product.
Not that the source material was that great to start off with. Tweety, one of my least favorite LT characters, is even more unappealing in this piece, given a lot of very lame lines. The new characters, Aooogah, a female canary that Tweety saves in Tibet, is really cipher; nothing more than someone for Tweety to save. Thankfully, this piece has a minimum of songs, but even the normally reliable Randy Rogel can't do anything interesting here. The same can be said of the voice acting. Joe Alasky (the voice of Tweety, Sylvester and Daffy Duck) is fine in his core roles, but he is far overused, doing characters he's not used to doing and it shows.
Overall, this is a piece that might've been interesting, but instead went horribly wrong.
