Room and Bird

Granny moves into the Spinster Arms Hotel but the only problem is they don't allow pets. So she has to sneak in Tweety and Sylvester. The two pets must avoid being discovered by the hotel detective, which is made all the more difficult by Sylvester being up to his usual routine of trying to catch Tweety. A very enjoyable Sylvester & Tweety short with the two characters at their most adorable and fun. My favorite bit was the one with Tweety taking the "elevator" and coming back up telling a mouse that Thomas Jefferson is dead. So odd but so funny. The voicework from Mel Blanc is wonderful. The music is lively and the animation is very good. The colors are beautiful. Love the ending to this one!

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.

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.

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.

Whether it is one of their best is up for debate, not for me but it is one of the better ones. It does start off a tad slow, but it gets much better once the action accelerates right up to the great end.

The animation is fluid and colourful, the character designs are above average and the colouring is lavish. The music is also quirky and fun, the dialogue has evidence of the Looney Tunes wit and the sight gags and chases are energetic and very manic. Sylvester is as fun as ever, and Tweety is cute too. The dog is wonderful to watch especially when the action accelerates.

So all in all, a fun cartoon. 9/10 Bethany Cox