Canned Feud

Canned Feud is an excellent cartoon- very funny, very clever and very inventive. While it could've been perhaps a tad longer, I enjoyed every minute. We know right from the start the mouse is not someone to be reckoned with. Is he likable? No, but that was the intention I think. Besides, it is very fast paced and along with Falling Hare has one of the most effective character mental break downs in cartoon history. The animation is excellent, the music is energetic and the whole cartoon is one funny and clever sight gag after sight gag after sight gag. Sylvester is wonderful to watch, and you do feel seriously sorry for him which was nice considering most of the time he is quite crafty and takes the laughs of each cartoon he features in. Overall, great. 9/10 Bethany Cox

Friz Freleng's 'Canned Feud' is a wonderful solo Sylvester cartoon. I always preferred Sylvester either on his own or paired with anyone but Tweety and this is one of his finest solo performances. Warren Foster's script has the inspirational twist of making a cat and mouse cartoon where the mouse is the bad guy. Sylvester does nothing to deserve the emotional and physical pummeling he gets in 'Canned Feud' and that somehow makes the experience all the more delicious. We share in Sylvester's desperation as he finds himself locked in the house for a fortnight with only canned food to eat, only to discover that a smug mouse has taken the only can opener. Like many of Freleng's best cartoons, 'Canned Feud' is extremely high-energy. Rather than start out slightly worried and build into a frenzy as the cartoon progresses, Sylvester starts at frenzy and builds to complete mental collapse. It's a classic performance by the cat, a masterclass in the art of animated physical comedy. A few fairly standard jokes are given new life by virtue of Sylvester's crazed desperation and there are tons of brilliantly original gags too. The axehead joke is one of my all-time favourites, so beautifully simple and perfectly timed. 'Canned Feud' is a Freleng masterpiece: a hysterical, frantic, claustrophobic study of obsessive desperation and unnecessary cruelty that just pulsates with energy. Up there with Freleng classics such as 'Yankee Doodle Daffy' and 'Kit for Cat'.

Every now and then, a cartoon comes along that you can't help but feel bad for the supposed-bad guy. Sylvester's owners have gone on vacation in California, and they (gasp!) forgot to put the cat out! Sylvester luckily finds a stash of canned tuna, but he still needs a can opener to get the food or he'll starve. As luck would have it, there is only one can opener in the house, and it's being held by a mouse who decides to torture poor Sylvester into fighting for it.

I couldn't help but watch this and wonder, what did Sylvester do to deserve this? Makes you wonder just what he's done to that mouse in the past to deserve such treatment. Or, there is the possible alternative that this mouse is just evil, pure and simple. Either way, Sylvester truly takes a beating through a falling piano, a vacuum cleaner, and a rather large mess of fireworks, as he desperately tries to keep from starving. A Friz Freling classic that everyone will love.

Watching Friz Freling's Canned Feud, I found myself feeling very sorry for Sylvester for not getting the can opener, to open tuna, from a mean little mouse since no reason is established for his animosity. Still, its pretty funny seeing the cat trying to do nasty things back to the rodent and failing each time. And the twist at the end shows how exhausted Sylvester can get with each obstacle. So, with that in mind, I'll just say that despite the cat being more sympathetic this time around, that doesn't lessen the laughs I got from all his troubles with the mouse, the can opener, and the way things turned out in the end. Frustration can be so hilarious when one calamity builds upon another. So, on that note, I highly recommend Canned Feud.

Hilarious cartoon in which Sylvester The Cat is accidentally left inside the house when his owners Sam and Violet go off to California for vacation. The puddy tat panics until he finds a cupboard full of tuna and other feline-friendly treats, but he can't find the can opener, because a mean-spirited mouse has appropriated the device!!! I felt sorry for poor Sylvester and wished he'd catch that mean rodent and eat him up!!!