Lumber Jerks

Of the nine Goofy Gophers cartoons, four of them were directed by Fritz Freleng. And while the best of the Goofy Gophers will always be the first one 'The Goofy Gophers', all of Freleng's efforts are very good to great.

'Lumber Jerks' for me is the weakest of the four, but not really for any major flaws. Just that the previous three had a little more imagination and tighter pacing, this is unusually slow-moving for the series and it may be a turn off for some, for me the restraint was admirable but a couple of parts were a little too staid for my liking. 'Lumber Jerks' however is still a very good cartoon.

The animation is just lovely as always with the early and middle period Looney Tunes cartoons, with some bright vibrant colours and richly detailed backgrounds and everything is very fluidly and smoothly drawn with no obvious jarring anywhere.

While Carl Stalling for me has always been the slightly better composer, Milt Franklyn still does a fine job, it is always dynamic and beautiful to listen to with lots of energy, whimsy and lively character. More importantly, it fits beautifully, just that Stalling's music went one step further in enhancing the action more effectively.

The dialogue manages to be both sharp and restrained, clever in structure and filled with the usual fresh and zany Looney Tunes wit, never less than very funny. The gags, in laugh-a-minute mode, are imaginative and executed very well indeed, most of the humour coming from the endearingly over polite dialogue between Mac and Tosh.

The story is still entertaining, if not as lively in pace as the previous Goofy Gopher cartoons. One may miss the dark and sometimes brutal, but never over-the-top cartoonish or stomach-churningly sadistic slapstick and violence of their earlier outings with the intellectual and well-spoken dog, but the visual humour is still a lot of fun here.

Mac and Tosh work are a wonderfully entertaining duo, if a very acquired taste, being cute yet very funny in their over-politeness to one another. They are voiced adroitly by Stan Freberg and Mel Blanc.

All in all, very good though there's better in the Goofy Gophers series. 8/10 Bethany Cox

The Goofy Gophers are one of the lesser known creations from Termite Terrace. Their schtick, involving excessive politeness and a need to make an articulate comment on virtually every little detail, emphasises the verbal as opposed to the physical and their constant yammering back and forth is a truly love-it-or-hate-it experience. Fortunately, I fall firmly into the former category. I've always found the Goofy Gophers absolutely hilarious and while they may have been too much of an acquired taste for stardom, their excessively talky comedy makes a refreshing alternative to the anvil and dynamite slapstick favoured in many of Friz Freleng's other cartoons. The Gophers were created by Bob Clampett although he left Warner Bros. before he got a chance to direct them. Their cartoons were subsequently divided up between Art Davis, Robert McKimson and Friz. Freleng has done a beautiful job with 'Lumber Jerks', ensuring the laughs barely stop throughout this remarkably slow moving cartoon. There's even a hint of an environmental message as the Gophers lose their home to logging and proceed to trace the progress of their tree as it is sawn up and made into furniture. For those who cannot abide the Goofy Gophers middle class politeness, 'Lumber Jerks' will be a painful experience but fans like me will find it delightful. Warren Foster's wonderfully restrained script wisely makes the Gophers the whole show with barely another character showing up throughout. Most of my favourite Freleng cartoons are wildly energetic pieces such as 'Canned Feud' or 'Yankee Doodle Daffy' but 'Lumber Jerks' takes a different approach and comes up with a different kind of classic and a fascinating showcase for two of the oddest characters in the Warner Bros. repertoire.

Lumber Jerks (1955)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Twin gophers are collecting nuts to move into their new home (a tree) when lumber jacks tear it down and move it down the river to turn into furniture. Freleng and Blanc were masters of animation but this here is one of their duds. I really can't say too many goods things about this short and the more I think of it the less I like it. For starters, found a lot of the animation to be mediocre at best. Nothing is downright bad but at the same time nothing really jumps off the screen saying it's good. I was also rather disappointed in the vocals because they're more annoying than anything else. I'm sure the heart of the filmmakers were in the right place but the end results are pretty lacking.

I wouldn't compare this cartoon to Chip and Dale, those gophers are funny being themselves. Their flavor is certainly, English accent and behavior of gentlemen, that was funny as hell. It would be interesting to know what exactly means this world play "Lumber Jerks", 'cause I've came up with two variants. As usually this cartoon was simply killed in translation to Russian language, besides, somehow gophers turned out to be boy and girl :) I wish there was more of these characters to see, and I second that one of the drivers was Bugs Bunny, that was a nice touch. As for DVD release it is very worth buying the video quality is very good, that is remastered very good, vivid colors and stuff like that, audio quality is good as well considering that it is from year 1955, you know.

Mac and Tosh? The Goofy Gophers? Never heard of them. And I bet Walt Disney cried plagiarism the day this came out. And I don't blame him if he did as they are a total rip-off of Chip and Dale. They are kinda funny funny though.

Mac and Tosh both have English accents and are very well spoken. When lumberjacks show up in their forest and cut their home down they go off to the lumber mill to get it back. Only it's made into furniture (you can't help but notice the tiniest environmental subtext here) and they plan to steal it back, nonetheless, from the delivery drivers (one of whom sounds EXACTLY like Bugs).

They are cute but not strong enough to really last as long as the better known Looney Tunes. And perhaps Disney put an injunction on Warner preventing such blatant plagiarism. Is this why we never saw Mac and Tosh again?