Porky Chops

A hip squirrel from New York goes to the woods to relax but his vacation is interrupted by lumberjack Porky, who's trying to cut down his tree. Judging by some of the reviews on here, this one seems to set off some Porky Pig fans. I can kind of see why since Porky is little more than an Elmer Fudd-like villain for the squirrel to defeat. But this didn't really bother me as Porky is not high on my list of favorite Looney Tunes characters. The squirrel is clearly the star of this short with all the best lines and gags. I disagree strongly with another reviewer who said this cartoon was ugly. The animation is quite lovely, with beautiful colors and nicely-drawn characters and backgrounds. Lively, whimsical music from Carl Stalling. Great voice work from Mel Blanc. An enjoyable cartoon if all one is expecting is entertainment. If you're a Porky fan looking for an impressive showcase for his character, you might be disappointed.

Even if you were not to know who the director and the writers were before watching this cartoon, it's almost certain that you would start suspecting none of the usual gang at the Warner Brothers animation studio were behind this entry. What we have here are writers who worked at the studio only for a brief time, and a director who was more successful as an animator. The end result is very strange, feeling like it was done by people who had only seen a handful of Looney Tunes cartoons before being assigned to make this cartoon. They have the words, but not the music - the timing is very off, and they don't seem to understand how the characters (both the protagonist and antagonist) need to act. I agree with the previous poster that this was an odd choice for Warner Brothers first box set of Looney Tunes cartoons - it certainly is no classic. Still, I must admit it shines when placed next to some of the cartoons that came out of the cartoon studio during its dying days.

Don't get me wrong, this cartoon is good, but Not that good. The Squirrel is highly amusing, and doesn't need any improvement, but porky on the other hand..... Who is he? This just isn't porky, if it was Elmer it would make so much more sense, or even Yosemite Sam in a different Profession, but porky just doesn't work. The Animation is pretty nice though, with nice fluid movements, and Storybeats that are fast-paced and leave you on the edge of your seat at all times.

The problem is, you don't care for porky in this cartoon, quite the opposite when he's with Daffy Duck. He's a bland piece of tofu, In A pig form! The jokes and the squirrel redeem it though, and all in all, kids will find it enormous fun.

7/10.

In a nutshell, Porky Pig is a lumberjack who's chopping down a tree that occupies a squirrel who wears pajamas, hangs a "Brooklyn Dodgers" banner over his bed, and reads the racing forms from the newspaper. The squirrel tries various ways to shoo the pig away like putting aluminum siding on the tree and then disguising it with varnish as Porky fails to chop with various axes that keep losing their sharp heads. Many funny chase gags abound and a twist involving a bear especially pays off here. This cartoon came from the short-lived Arthur Davis unit and it shows how talented Davis really was with the timing of the gags and pacing that also marked his predecessor, Bob Clampett. Too bad, due to budget constraints, Warner Bros. later had to cut Davis' staff. Porky Chops is highly recommended.

Porky Pig is clear cutting the North Woods. A squirrel lives in the last tree standing. Porky starts chopping. Well, the squirrel is not surrendering his home yet.

I don't mind Porky Pig as a lumberjack, but maybe there are better choices. The no-name squirrel is fine, but maybe there is a better choice there too. At the end of the day, neither are obviously the perfect choices for the roles. This feels like an extraneous short. There is nothing special about this. Even the bear feels non-special. I don't know the size of this bear, but he ends up in the squirrel's home. Maybe he shrank along the way.