It's Nice to Have a Mouse Around the House

While I've seen worse, I kept thinking that this cartoon would have no reason to exist save for the fact that Warner Brothers had a contractual obligation to supply a certain number of shorts to movie theaters, so they fiddled around with film stock, yawned and sent this one out on an unsuspecting and somewhat indifferent world. While my view of the later Warner output is more charitable than others feel is warranted, a few miss the mark for me. This is one. Worth watching once. Recommended for completists.

I love Looney Tunes, always have as a child and still do as a 20-year old adult. It's Nice to Have a Mouse Around the House though is one of the few that underwhelmed me. Let's start off by saying that I don't hate Speedy Gonzales, and not all his cartoons are bad, though none are classics in my eyes. It's Nice to Have a Mouse Around the House is not a bad one, and it is much better than other Speedy entries like Speedy Ghost to Town and especially See Ya Later Gladiator. But it does leave much to be desired.

Starting with the good things, the music by Bill Lava- I do consider Carl Stalling and Milt Franklin better composers for Looney Tunes though- does have some nice moments and character and is one of his better scores for the Speedy cartoons. The consequences of Daffy vacuuming up the water in the pool are very funny to watch, and it is by far the most inspired gag. Of the four characters featured, the best character is Sylvester, sly and amusing as ever, even if he has been much better written before. Mel Blanc's voice work is superb, and while not as good as June Foray GeeGee Pearson does do a worthy job as Granny, who is nice to see but she doesn't have all that much to write home about. As noted before in the review title and in the previous review, It's Nice to Have a Mouse Around the House is most notable for being Speedy and Daffy's first pairing up together, other than that there is not that much beyond.

Regrettably, in It's Nice to Have a Mouse Around the House, the animation quality is lacking. By all means, it is not the worst looking Speedy cartoon as the character designs are pretty decent, but the backgrounds look very sparse and bland and some of the colours are flat looking. Humour-wise, the cartoon is unremarkable. There is one inspired gag, but the rest, and that is including the dialogue, lacks the freshness and sharp wit that made many Looney Tunes cartoons classics. I'll forgive the predictability of the story, but I can't say the same for the lack of energy and spark in it. Speedy has always been a divisive-in opinions that is-character, but coming from someone who doesn't mind him I don't find him at all funny here. This was an atypical entry for him as the only thing that resembles Mexico is him and his accent, and the atypicality really shows in how out of depth he is. Even more disappointing is Daffy. I just love Daffy, he is one of my favourite characters of all time in animation, but I often find him too mean-spirited in his outings with Speedy and I'm afraid that this is no exception, and his material is not funny or good enough.

All in all, underwhelming but actually Speedy has done much worse. 5/10 Bethany Cox

Warner Bros closed its animation department in 1963, so Friz Freleng launched his own production company with David DePatie, and they licensed their new series to Warner Bros. This new series featured most of the same characters but was no match for the cartoons released between 1935 (Porky's debut) and 1963 (the closure). The final cartoon got released in 1969.

Anyway, "It's Nice to Have a Mouse Around the House" was the first of several Daffy Duck-Speedy Gonzales pairings. In this case, the energetic rodent is raising cain in Granny's house, and Sylvester can't catch him, so Granny hires the lisping mallard to deal with him. Sure enough, Speedy always gets the better of Daffy.

As to the issue of whether or not these cartoons were racist, that depends on how we're using the word. They stereotyped Mexico, but large numbers of Latinos liked that they depicted Mexicans positively (a sharp contrast to the John Wayne movies).

Basically, Speedy's cartoons in the late '50s were his best ones. I particularly liked "Here Today, Gone Tamale".