Baby Bottleneck

The year 1946 marks the first full year, I believe, of "The Baby Boomers."

Anyway, corny humor and a cop-out beginning (using past footage of other cartoons) has us looking at a newspaper headline reading " Unprecedented Demand For Babies Leads to Overworked Stork." We then go to the famous nightclub, "The Stork Club" (where else) where the drunk Jimmy Durante-stork is crying the blues that he does all the work and gets no credit. Then they show some stock footage in demonstrating how the stork has been making mistakes with wrong deliveries.

That weak segment gives away to better things when Porky Pig is appointed to handle the stork's problems and Daffy Duck assigned as his assistant....but not that much better. The assembly line babies included some good material but Daffy doesn't look like Daffy and isn't anywhere as funny as he was in later cartoons. This has the appearance of a 1930s 'toon. It looked primitive and lacked the smart humor of the 1950s stuff.

Maybe there is some unintended bias, seeing as Bob Clampett has a very interesting and wonderfully wacky style that is always a joy to watch.

Daffy is also one of Looney Tunes' most iconic, most interesting and funniest characters and while Porky is sometimes bland on his own and can be overshadowed by supporting characters he is amusing and likable and his partnership with Daffy is always hugely enjoyable. The premise is also a pretty unique one for the time.

Anybody who is a fan of Clampett, Daffy and Porky are more than likely to love 'Baby Bottleneck'. For me, it's one of the best and one of the funniest for all three. The premise is interesting and different, and is executed in a way that constantly entertains and intrigues. The beginning may not work for some people, personally was never alienated by it and thought it was visually clever and fun.

The animation is not only beautifully drawn, very detailed and colourful but there are some really imaginative moments, especially towards the end with the unhatched egg. Carl Stalling always made a great cartoon even better with his music scores, and with its lush and lively orchestration, high energy and character and action-enhancing synchronisation his music for 'Baby Bottleneck' is hardly an exception.

'Baby Bottleneck' throughout is incredibly funny and often hilarious. The mix ups are funny enough, but the highlight is the war over the unhatched egg with a hysterical exchange of dialogue and imaginative visuals. The dialogue is deliciously wild and looney and the razor sharp wit is more than evident too. There are many references here and they are fun to spot and recognise, though they are of the time and may go over the heads of some. The gags are just as fun and inventive, with the distinctive Clampett wackiness.

Daffy is wonderfully manic and bitter, and Porky is a very likable foil and no less amusing. Mel Blanc's voice work is characteristically fantastic, very rarely did this supremely talented man disappoint in his career apart from when even he couldn't salvage some bad material seen in too much of the mid-late-60s output.

Overall, a classic. 10/10 Bethany Cox

The baby-delivering Stork is in a drunk stupor and the enlisted workers are far from competent making grievous mistakes. Delevering the wrong babies to parents. Porky Pig steps up to fix the whole thing out with Daffy Duch as his secretary, but things don't go as planned in this short, another classic by Bob Clampett. All the mix-ups are frequently very funny and i found myself laughing out load quite a few times, but the ending is the real kicker. Utterly hilarious!! This animated short can be seen on Disc 3 of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume 2 and also features an optional commentary by Michael Barrier.

My Grade: A+

Bob Clampett's 'Baby Bottleneck' is a satire on the post-war baby boom in which Porky Pig and Daffy Duck run a factory to assist with the preparation and delivery of new born babies. This entails an automated production line which dresses, burps, feeds and dispatches the young animals. For the most part, 'Baby Bottleneck' is a spot gag cartoon with Porky and Daffy simply pulling levers and answering phones. They only get to really do anything towards the end of the cartoon when they get into a war over an unhatched egg. Often when he was assigned spot-gag cartoons, Clampett's wild on-screen energy would be dulled but 'Baby Bottleneck' is an exception and Clampett manages to infuse the quickfire gags with a pulsating vitality. Unfortunately, 'Baby Bottleneck' is full to the brim with long forgotten references which inescapably dates the cartoon and makes it more of a curio than a laugh riot to modern day audiences. There are, however, a couple of typically risqué Clampett gags. Especially conspicuous is a joke with a baby alligator trying to suckle a mother pig. When she finally turns to the alligator the cartoon quickly cuts away before she has chance to speak. The cut line was apparently "Ah-ah-ah, don't touch that dial"!

The stork has been overworked so inexperienced help is brought in, leading to lots of delivery errors. So Porky is hired to run the baby factory and brings along Daffy as his assistant. Wackiness follows. Great Looney Tunes short from Bob Clampett. Plenty of funny lines, gags, and even pop culture references of the time. Lovely animation; well-drawn characters and backgrounds. Nice colors. The music from Carl Stalling is bouncy and fits the action well. Excellent voice work as always from Mel Blanc. The cartoon moves along at a fast pace which plays particularly well to Daffy's zany strengths. A very entertaining short all around. Sure to please most fans of the Porky & Daffy team-ups.