Hoppy Daze

I know that it's part of Sylvester's persona not to be bright enough to realize that Hippety Hopper is a kangaroo, but it still seems pretty dumb to go after an animal his size; hell, Sylvester can't catch Tweety or Speedy. In this case, a tough guy cat - actually, he looks like the bastard child of a cat and the Tasmanian Devil - hires Sylvester to catch mice. Sure enough, Sylvester comes across HH and repeatedly gets clobbered.

"Hoppy Daze" seems to me like a sort of place holder as the Warner Bros. animation department was approaching its end. But it's still a pretty neat cartoon. Far from the greatest one, but OK. And I really like the noise that HH makes at the end; you could say that he was hop-rodding.

Regarding the Sylvester and Hippety Hopper cartoons, a few are great (Cats A-weigh, Who's Kitten Who, Hoppy-Go-Lucky and and Pop 'im Pop) some are very enjoyable providing that you don't expect the best cartoons ever made, but after Bell Hoppy the cartoons didn't feel as inspired and the concept started to wear thin, though the cartoons remained watchable. Hoppy Daze for me it one of the weakest and least inspired of their cartoons.

Starting with the good things, the animation does contain some nice colours and Sylvester and the tough cat are well drawn. Milt Franklyn does a typically great job scoring the cartoon, it's lively and dynamic music and it's beautifully orchestrated and some of the use of instruments is clever. It also fits wonderfully and adds to the action, the music accompanying Sylvester and Hippety hopping up the crates in the final gag was particularly well done. Hoppy Daze is a very amusing cartoon, if not exactly hilarious due to Hippety's antics being much fresher and more varied in the previous cartoons but the witty dialogue and the interaction between Sylvester and the tough cat brings some good laughs, as do the dynamite and final gags. Sylvester is ruthless, very funny and easy to root for, while the tough cat is amusing support. Mel Blanc is terrific as always.

Hippety however has been better drawn before, he still looks okay but a little rougher than usual, and while cute his material is more of the same stuff with not the same amount of spark as before. Likewise his interaction with Sylvester is fun, but not with the amount of spark and freshness as before. The animation is never terrible here, especially compared to that for some of the cartoons later on like the later Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote cartoons and pretty much all the Daffy and Speedy cartoons, but as said already Hippety has been better drawn, the backgrounds have been more detailed and more vibrant and one does miss those wonderful big expressions or visual invention of the earlier cartoons in the Sylvester and Hippety Hopper series, Sylvester's expressions are pretty ordinary here. The story also seemed rather tired here, the Sylvester and Hippety cartoons do all revolve around the same concept but the first six or seven cartoons handled the concept much more inventively and with crisper pacing, whereas after Bell Hoppy the concept started to wear thin and like the series was running out of ideas, of which Hoppy Daze was one of the worst cases.

Overall, a very watchable pairing of Sylvester and Hippety but one of their weaker cartoons, from memory I remember Freudy Cat being their weakest. 6/10 Bethany Cox

Middling later Sylvester & Hippety Hopper short from Robert McKimson. In this one a streetsmart cat cons Sylvester into catching mice for him because he's lost a step. Then we get the old routine where Sylvester goes into a building to catch a mouse but finds Hopper instead. This isn't terrible but it isn't great, either. The only thing that saves it from being a by-the-numbers retread of previous Hopper cartoons is the somewhat humorous old cat with the Jimmy Durante-esque voice and the boxing trainer jokes. He's pretty much a stand-in for Sylvester Jr., who normally would be here egging his father on and shaming him for being beaten up by a mouse. The animation is colorful but nothing to write home about. Great voice work from Mel Blanc, as always. Give it a look if you're a Sylvester completist, otherwise I suggest checking out earlier Hippety Hopper cartoons.

A tough New Yorker cat is tired of chasing mice on the docks and looks for another way. He spies Sylvester going through bins in the yard and takes him on as his manager (in agreement that Sylvester will get 20% of any mice caught). However Sylvester mistakes a crated kangaroo in the warehouse for a mouse and finds it very difficult to catch him.

The plot here is a basic one which involves Sylvester getting seven shades kicked out of him by a kangaroo who he mistakes for a rather bulky mouse. In between these bouts, Sylvester is coached by a tough New York alley cat who acts as a sort of boxing manager to him. Although the kangaroo stuff is amusing but it is the tough alley cat stuff that is funnier. None of it really got belly laughs out of me but the majority of it is funny enough to get by.

The kangaroo is pretty poor; animation wise he is very basic but also as a character he is just an orange/brown blob to be honest. Sylvester is not as ruthless as he can be, but he is amusing enough here - this personae works well here simply because he is supported by the tough talking New Yorker alley cat that acts as a typical tough boxing trainer.

Overall, this isn't a great film but it is generally pretty amusing even if it isn't that smart. It has enough little character touches to make it enjoyable even if the material had definite room for improvement.