The Music Mice-Tro (Merrie Melodies)
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| The Music Mice-Tro (episode 976) | ||||||||||||
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A short where you are supposed to root for the previously miscast villainous Daffy Duck, rather than Speedy Gonzales? Sounds interesting....
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The Music Mice-Tro is a 1967 Merrie Melodies cartoon produced by Format Films. In this short, Daffy Duck tries to go on vacation to avoid the stress of being a Hollywood director, but the antics caused by Speedy Gonzales and his band end up making chaos.
Why It Wasn't a Mice-Tro
- It is a Daffy Duck torture cartoon, so much that it makes Speedy look more of the antagonist than Daffy here.
- Even though Daffy Duck has been known for his evil characteristics in the DePatie-Freleng and Seven Arts eras, in this short, Daffy Duck is actually stressed and tries to avoid his past characteristics, making Speedy's actions against Daffy seem even more unnecessary and just there to make Daffy look like the villain instead.
- On the topic with Speedy Gonzales, Speedy's infamous flanderization as an outright sadistic jerk from "Mexican Cat Dance" returns in this short, as here Speedy and his band continuously annoy, torture and inflict pain on Daffy throughout the short without any comedic moments, making Speedy more similar in personality to Jerry Mouse's flanderized persona from the Gene Deitch-era than his own true self. Luckily for us, this flanderization was immediately undone starting from "The Spy Swatter" and mostly onwards, where Speedy Gonzales was reverted back to the likable "Fastest Mouse in All of Mexico" he was.
- Obnoxious use of Hanna-Barbera, Total Television, and Jay Ward sound effects, as with any cartoon produced by Format Films.
- Some of the actions that Speedy tries to invoke against Daffy are so brutal and are only there to make the "slapstick" realistic, such as tanning him into a crisp, making him drink pool water, and having him accidentally choke on a golf ball.
- Consequently, this results the short to rely a lot more on gratuitous over-the-top violence instead of slapstick.
- The gags in this short are not funny, but rather brutal and hurtful.
- Extremely awful animation, as typical for any short produced by Format Films.
- There is a pointless filler scene using recycled animation of Daffy crashing his golf cart over a curve and Speedy showing it in a replay to pad out time. Unlike another short that did this effect "Tabasco Road", ten years prior.
- Not only does that scene in question serve no purpose at all to the plot, yet Speedy's line preceding that replay scene "For the benefit of those of you who might've missed that last scene, I show it to you again on instant replay" makes the replay scene in question very intelligence-insulting to the viewers as if they have an extremely poor attention span, since that original animation of Daffy crashing his golf cart over a curve plays at normal speed which the average viewer would be able to not miss it and pick it up for themselves. This is unlike "Tabasco Road" where it worked because Speedy does this instant replay gag at a scene which moves way too fast by repeating the exact same scene in slow-motion so that the viewers can pick up what is going on behind the lightning fast-paced scene.
- Uninteresting music from William Lava, which might be fittingly why Daffy went crazy for the short.
- Speedy and his band never get their comeuppance or even any scathing for their actions.
- Terrible ending: Daffy tries to escape Balmy Springs to get away from Speedy, only for Speedy and his band to stowaway on Daffy's car and continue to annoy him on the way home.
Redeeming Qualities
- This is one of the very few shorts from the DePatie-Freleng and Seven Arts eras where Daffy Duck is actually tolerable and has a proper reason to be going after Speedy Gonzales.
- Good voice work from Mel Blanc.
- Decent effort by background artist Walt Peregoy.
- Occasional signs of effort from animator Virgil Ross.
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