A Peck o' Trouble

A Peck o' Trouble is not a personal favourite and Robert McKimson has done better, it's still a good cartoon but not great. The ending is the least funny scene of the cartoon and feels abrupt, the kitten is not an appealing character who's more annoying and underwritten than he is funny and the pace can be a little on the slow side at times. A Peck o' Trouble is still a beautifully drawn and brightly coloured cartoon though, and the music is full of character and energy with lovely orchestration and seamless action synchronisation. The writing has been sharper before with McKimson but it is funny and has evidence of freshness and wit, while the gags and slapstick while routine still raises laughs. The story lacks the vibrant pace of most Looney Tunes cartoons but is nonetheless fun and charming. Dodsworth is not a bad leading character at all, in fact he is very charismatic and much wittier than he looks, and didn't get enough of a chance, Sheldon Leonard voices him wonderfully and gives what he has been given a good amount of energy. Mel Blanc deserved much more though, he still does his best as he always did but he has been much funnier and much better used, that the character of the kitten is one of his weakest ever characters doesn't help. In conclusion, quite good but could've been much better. 7/10 Bethany Cox

A strong script and excellent voice work by Sheldon Leonard make this a cartoon worth seeing. Part of the short-lived "Dodsworth" series -- I've only seen two of them -- about a fat, lazy cat that keeps suckering a mewing kitten into doing his work for him, Dodsworth somehow turns into a dead ringer for Rodney Dangerfield twenty years before anyone had heard about him!

This is the second straight "Dodsworth" cartoon I've watched on this Looney Tunes Spotlight Collection Vol. 4 DVD and - like the first Dodsworth - it is terrific. There are similarities in theme with "Kiddin The Kitten and but the dialog and gags are still clever and humorous.

In this one, our lazy friend wants a woodpecker for breakfast. The problem is that the woodpecker lives high up in a tree. The tree looks like one of those redwoods it is so high. There is no way Dodsworth is going to work for his breakfast. It's never been done in the history of his lazy family. So, as in the other cartoon, he gets a little kitten to do the work for him, under the guise of being his professor and teaching him the ropes of being a cat.

Well, the adventures of this little kitten trying to get the smart woodpecker, and the various ways Dodsworth employs the little guy are all funny. It reminds one a bit of all the inventions Wile E. Coyote uses to try to catch the Roadrunner. Only the ending here was a little weak, or I would have rated it a "10" for sure.

Tedd Pierce, writer for these Dodsworth cartoons, should be cited for his work. It's always fun to hear Sheldon Leonard, too, as the voice of Dodsworth

Robert McKimson's 'A Peck O' Trouble' is a second attempt to break in the character of Dodsworth, a fat, lazy cat who debuted in McKimson's frankly dreadful 'Kiddin' the Kitten' (a cartoon every bit as terrible as its title). Dodsworth is clearly not fit for stardom, his comedy being based on an uneasy mix of slow-paced verbal gags and slapstick with the emphasis on the former. To make matters worse, McKimson resurrects the boss-eyed kitten from the previous cartoon as well. This pale, freakish little character has no appealing characteristics whatsoever. Perhaps the assumption that something could be made of Dodsworth is understandable (given the right script, which he never got, Dodsworth might have been a very effective character) but the return of this utterly repulsive sidekick is totally mystifying. 'A Peck O' Trouble' proves to be no more effective than 'Kiddin' the Kitten' and is ultimately perhaps a little worse. Thank god Dodsworth was abandoned at this stage, allowing McKimson to concentrate on the similar but vastly superior Foghorn Leghorn series.

I guess that Robert McKimson only cast Dodsworth and the anonymous kitten in two cartoons, but the two cats do some great stuff in both turns. In "A Peck o' Trouble", lazy Dodsworth wants to eat a woodpecker for breakfast, but the woodpecker lives in a tall tree, which Dodsworth refuses to climb (after all, no member of his family has ever stooped to physical labor). So, as in "Kiddin' the Kitten", Dodsworth pretends to teach a class on catching the animal, and teaches a kitten how to do it (in the first cartoon, the kitten was white; here he's yellow). But sure enough, things don't go quite as Dodsworth planned.

At first glance, this is a neat look at turning a dishonest situation upside down. But also, it shows that - contrary to what some people have written in other reviews - Robert McKimson directed many good shorts. When Warner Bros. had to close one of its animation units in the late 1940s, it's a good thing that they kept open McKimson's unit; without it, we wouldn't have Foghorn Leghorn, Hippety Hopper and the Tasmanian Devil.* Anyway, I just get a kick out of what happens to the languid Dodsworth. He's like a feline version of Foghorn Leghorn. Worth seeing.

PS: Sheldon Leonard, who provided Dodsworth's voice, produced "The Danny Thomas Show", "The Andy Griffith Show" and "The Dick Van Dyke Show".

*In all fairness to Arthur Davis (whose unit they discontinued), he had a pretty interesting record, namely "Bowery Bugs".