If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

. . . "Piggy," with this animated short, PIGS IS PIGS. Warner wanted to underline their warning to America about the Fat Cat Greedheads who had caused the then on-going Great Depression. No matter how much the gluttonous Piggy ingests here, he not only wants--he finds a way to STEAL more. Piggy is shown at the family supper table slurping down all the spaghetti right off his nine siblings' plates into his own insatiable gullet with such a gusto it was adapted by THERE WILL BE BLOOD villain Daniel Day Lewis into his infamous "I'll suck your straw!" scene. Even when Piggy falls into the clutches of an evil scientist, who force-feeds him fuller than a dozen Foie Gras geese, Piggy still is grasping for MORE! Warner tries to warn America NEVER to allow the One Per Center thieves and self-proclaimed Billionaires to ever filch our food again, Lording it over everyone else. These miscreants MUST be neutralized with extreme prejudice, just as the Looney Tuners pigged out themselves at Piggy's pig roast after completing PIGS IS PIGS. We all know how the U.S. Sheep Nation has backslid in the face of the Porkers to date. But as they say at the corner butcher shop, growing a backbone is better late than never.

Despite what the title may imply, "Pigs Is Pigs" does not star Porky Pig. Rather, it features a young swine with an appetite more insatiable than John Belushi's character in "Animal House". His mother repeatedly scolds him, but it does no good. So much so that he goes to another house where a deranged scientist force-feeds him more than any mere mortal can handle (but there's a surprise at the end).I would mostly say that this cartoon seemed like a place holder in between the really great cartoons (Daffy Duck debuted three months after this came out). But make no mistake about it, they do some neat things here. The whole force-feeding sequence looks more relevant today, given the obesity epidemic overtaking our country.Anyway, not the greatest cartoon, but worth seeing.

Technicolor rears its beautiful head right on the opening shot, one of the prettiest scenes of a straw-thatched house in the country you've ever seen.This is a story of a little pig who was a big pig when it came to eating. He couldn't stop and even ate all his brothers spaghetti at one meal. His mother chastises him, saying he will regret his actions.One day some ghoulish-looking guy invites him inside, straps him into a machine and force- feeds him a ton of food. It reminded me of what happened to a guy addicted to violence in the famous late '60s film, "A Clockwork Orange." There, a guy was treated similarly for addiction violence; here, it's food.What happens to Piggie at the mad scientist's place and at the end of the cartoon is unexpected.

The Warner Brothers cartoon 'Pigs Is Pigs' takes its title from a best-selling humour book by Ellis Parker Butler, but is not otherwise related to that book. (In fact, the 'pigs' in Butler's book are guinea pigs.)This very funny cartoon is about a little-boy pig (not Porky) who lives with his young siblings and their mother. (There doesn't seem to be a father pig in this family, so who brings home the bacon?) There are several spot gags dealing with the gluttonous Piggy stealing his siblings' dinners as well as scoffing his own.Eventually he leaves home and finds himself at the door of a mad scientist (with an elaborate hiccough) who invites Piggy in for some free food. Which, indeed, he gets. But the mad scientist is testing a contraption that resembles the feeding machine in Chaplin's 'Modern Times', only it's more aggressive. The scientist straps Piggy into the machine, which then proceeds to force-feed him huge amounts of food. We get a variation of Friz Freleng's 'Hold the Onions' gag, which showed up in several Freleng toons. At the climax of the story, there's a very impressive montage as the scientist ratchets up the action. When he's finished, he laughs evilly as Piggy finds himself swollen to gargantuan girth. (Great voice work as the scientist by Billy Bletcher, better known for the voice of Paw Bear in some later Warners toons.)SPOILER COMING. Warner Bros were the most cynical movie studio, and 'Pigs Is Pigs' follows the same pattern as several other Warners cartoons - including 'Now that Summer Is Gone' and 'I Wanna Be a Sailor' - in which a little-boy animal with a moral failing (in this case, gluttony) is taught a lesson and appears to repent but then (hilariously) proves he has no intention of reforming. In the case of 'Pigs Is Pigs', the whole ordeal turns out to be a nightmare ... and of course Piggy hasn't really learnt his lesson.Kids and adults will both get a laugh out of this toon. 'Pigs Is Pigs' is also interesting for another reason, and from here on this review is adults-only. At approximately age eight, a boy named Bob Flanagan was profoundly impressed by 'Pigs Is Pigs'. Flanagan had cystic fibrosis, and he had to be repeatedly spanked on his chest by an adult in order to clear out his fibrotic tissues. The sadomasochistic aspects of 'Pigs Is Pigs' (bondage, forced feeding, forced body modification, experiments on an unwilling subject) had a highly erotic effect on young Bob, who developed at an early age an interest in masochism. Bob Flanagan grew up to be the adult subject of the 1997 documentary 'Sick: The Life & Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist'. In his performance pieces, the adult Flanagan often paid tribute to 'Pigs Is Pigs' and its early influence on him. Several of the Warners cartoons by Bob Clampett have extreme fetish content, so it's intriguing to know that somebody found fetish content in a cartoon by the more staid Freleng. I'll rate 'Pigs Is Pigs' 9 out of 10. Don't worry, parents: this cartoon won't turn your kids into Bob Flanagan.