Great visuals, story delivers no surprises

Good concept, poorly executed.

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

'An Itch in Time', as with all Looney Tunes cartoons had much potential from the get go.There are many reasons why, with it being directed by Bob Clampett, having music by Carl Stalling, featuring the voices of Mel Blanc and Arthur Q. Bryan and that it featured Elmer, always amusing and watchable whose partnership with Bugs is legendary. It was also interesting as to what it would do with a slightly limited concept.Luckily, 'An Itch in Time' works really well and lives up to its potential. For me, its only disappointment is Elmer (looking closer to his familiar character design than his portlier look in his previous cartoons) having very little to do, as a character he's side-lined and too much of a plot-device and his material is not as inspired as that of the flea's and particularly the dog's.On the other hand, the animation as ever is of very well done quality. It's very lush and vibrant in the colours, it's rich and meticulous in background detail and all three characters are drawn well. There are also some really imaginative visuals in the gags, which play a large part as to why they work as well as they do, and the animation of the inside of the dog's fur equally so.Carl Stalling's music score is outstanding, once again a perfect demonstration as to why of the regular Looney Tunes composers he was my personal favourite. The orchestration is so sonically rich and beautiful as well as used so cleverly, it's high voltage in energy and character and it adds so much to what is going on. What Stalling also excelled in was incorporating pre-existing material and putting his own spin on it, here particularly standing out was a wonderfully upbeat "Food Around the Corner" (complete with some very inventive animation).Bob Clampett's direction is delightfully wacky, in a way that only he could be, and what could have easily have been limited material considering the concept turned out to be enormously entertaining. Dialogue is witty, with the dog boasting the best lines, and the gags are hilarious, visually imaginative (especially the dog's reactions) and Clampett's wackiness is apparent constantly in the flea's brutal but thankfully never gratuitously sadistic treatment of the dog.The other two characters carry 'An Itch in Time' strongly. The flea is cute, antagonistic and suitably obnoxious, without being overly so, but it's the dog that steals the show. The voices are spot-on, especially from a supremely talented Mel Blanc once again in multiple roles, particularly colourful as the dog.On the whole, a great Bob Clampett-directed cartoon though another case of the supporting characters making more of an impression than the most famous character. 9/10 Bethany Cox

Bob Clampett's 'An Itch in Time' milks seven minutes of crazy action out of a very small premise. Elmer Fudd tells his dog that if he scratches himself just once more that he will be given a dreaded bath. Unfortunately for the dog, a relentless flea makes it all but impossible to stop from scratching. The cartoon switches between the flea's progress inside the dog's fur and the dog's desperate attempts to cope with it. In a great sequence that really captures the frustration of an itch that can't be scratched, the dog changes colour from brown to blue to red to polka dotted to plaid! It sounds ludicrously surreal but it perfectly evokes the indescribable feeling of an itch in a way only Clampett could. There are several other elements which make 'An Itch in Time' pure Clampett. There's the grotesque concept itself, which leads to some graphic scenes of the flea munching on the dog's flesh. There's the unrestrained violence that rears its head in any scene featuring the cat. Most notably, there's the dirty jokes including a huge shot of the dog's behind which causes the flea to wolf-whistle and a hysterical sequence in which the dog attempts to scratch himself by dragging his backside along the floor. He momentarily breaks off to address the audience: "Hey, I better cut this out. I may get to like it"! With a very limited concept, Clampett manages to make 'An Itch in Time' a unique, minutiae-based cartoon. Like an early episode of 'Seinfeld', 'An Itch in Time' is practically about nothing but very funny with it.

Wonderfully directed by Bob Clampett, "An Itch in Time" is an entertaining Warner Bros. cartoon that is quite full of the kind of elaborate sight gags one would expect from Clampett. (He was, after all, the man who put the word "looney" in Looney Tunes.) The plot concerns a pesty little hillbilly flea with a voracious appetite. After spotting Elmer Fudd's dog, the flea believes he has just found his next meal.There are several memorable scenes from "An Itch in Time" that I shall now relate. First off, how could anybody forget the delightful little song "There'll Be Food around the Corner," sung repeatedly by the flea in his high-pitched voice? With the aid of a telescope in search of food, the flea stumbles upon a close-up of the dog's rump and lets out a wolf whistle! Elmer's flea powder sprinklings on the dog turn out to be a snowstorm for the flea. When Elmer catches his cat scratching the dog, both pets quite humorously cower in front of him (with a great sound effect) and helplessly look upward at him with large eyes. When Elmer and the dog slip on a bar of soap, they both respectively resemble Santa Claus and a reindeer as they are covered with soap bubbles. Even the sight of Elmer laughing at a Looney Tunes comic book is memorable! "An Itch in Time" can be found on Disc 4 of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume 3, with a very entertaining audio commentary by Warner Bros. animator Bill Melendez and contemporary animator John Kricfalusi. If I only had one concern for this film, I really feel that it was not necessary for the cat to shoot himself in the head at the very end after being a witness to all of Bob Clampett's craziness.

Elmer Fudd is at home reading his Porky Pig comic by the open fire with his dog asleep by his side. When a flea enters the house it heads straight for the dog, making both the dog's and Elmer's night a misery. However getting rid of him is not so easy.When this cartoon started I had reasonable hopes as I thought it might be a Bugs Bunny cartoon due to the presence of Elmer Fudd. However not only wasn't it, but Elmer himself seems to be in there simply to have a well known character in the cartoon. The main characters are actually the dog and the flea – neither of which are very good characters. The dog is OK but the flea is an annoying little fellow with a high voice that just grated on me.The jokes are OK without ever being very good. I think what pit me off the most was just the weakness of the characters – they weren't very interesting and, although their jokes would have made me laugh if other characters had done them, the weaknesses in their characters just seemed to drain a lot of the laughs out of the cartoon.Overall this could have been better and, indeed, many viewers may well find it funnier than I did. But for me a cartoon is not simply the jokes, it is also the characters and the plot framework. Here neither of those factors came into play and the already weak cartoon was just made weaker.