Room and Bird

The Spinsters Arms is an apartment building which doesn't allow pets. One old lady smuggles Tweety Bird into the building past its manager. Another old lady smuggles Sylvester the Cat into the same building. The pets get left alone in adjacent apartments. Sylvester hears Tweety's singing and tries to get a snack. There is also a dog in another room.

This is a solid Tweety and Sylvester cartoon. It is a good premise. It is a lot of the standard Tweety, Sylvester, dog interactions. I even like the building man. More than anything, I like the ending. In fact, I would like more of you-know-whats.

Friz Freleng's 'Room and Bird' is one of the better cartoons in the largely dull Sylvester and Tweety series. One of the crucial elements that elevates most of the better Sylvester and Tweety cartoons is the addition of more characters to be involved in the chase. 'Room and Bird' features the standard Bulldog but more crucially it features a hotel manager who is determined to keep his establishment free of pets. This extra angle means that the characters have to occasionally break from the chase and sometime set their differences aside in order to evade detection. Also working in 'Room and Bird's' favour is Tweety's less irritating that usual performance. Freleng's Tweety has a tendency to be overtly cute and slow cartoons down with eyelash fluttering poppet-isms. In 'Room and Bird' there simply isn't time for this sort of filler material and Tweety actually gets to deliver quite an amusing punch line to the whole she-bang.

We're at the "Spinsters Arms" hotel which also has a "no pets allowed" sign outside, and we see Granny trying to enter without the house detective noticing she has a covered birdcage with her. "Don't worry, Tweety, I'll get you in somehow," she tells her bird.

Soon, another old lady is telling her pet, Sylvester, the same thing! (I guess I forgot about Sylvester's owner, whom you rarely see.)

Both old ladies are successful. Tweety is singing away in room 1001 and Sylvester, staying next door in 1002, hears him and thinks "meal." You know that the rest of the way is going to be the usual: how does the cat get the bird and, as usual, Sylvester comes up with some amazing ploys that are fun to watch beginning with an anonymous admirer's note.

The action really accelerates in this one as the old bulldog we see a lot is also at the hotel and a few other surprises, all making the house detective about lose his mind. Really funny stuff with chase scenes reminiscent of the old silent film comedies.

What's most funny about "Room and Bird" is the fact that Sylvester and Tweety are in neighboring rooms in a hotel where no pets are allowed, and the manager keeps suspecting that something's up...all leading up to what happens at the end! Truth be told, the hotel manager reminded me just a little bit of Mr. Hand in "Fast Times at Ridgemont High", how he suspected everyone of breaking the rules. But that's just me. All in all, it's not a great cartoon by any stretch, but I just like the sight of seemingly lowly characters rattling authority figures (think "Animal House", and not just because of the animals here).

All in all, an OK cartoon. Worth seeing.

This cartoon has Sylvester Cat, Tweety Bird, and a bulldog all snuck in a deluxe apartment building where no pets are aloud. They have to avoid the manager while chasing each other around. I'm not the biggest Tweety bird fan, I thought at one point he may have been tolerable, but I got over that fast. I'm sorry, I did give him so many chances to change my mind, but Nada. The biggest laughs come from Sylvester and the bulldog (ok and Tweety in ONE instance when they dress up like one old woman) This animated short can be seen on Disc 3 of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume 2.

My Grade: C+