Fantastic!

A Major Disappointment

It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

As always, Chuck Jones's wise-guy mice Hubie and Bertie (making their debut) play tricks on an unsuspecting feline. While "The Aristo-Cat" has a fairly routine plot, the background catches my attention. The slanted angles look more like what I would expect in a Salvador Dali painting (Bob Clampett used Daliesque angles to a great degree in "The Great Piggy Bank Robbery"). But it's not just the angles. The colors - resembling those in Jones's "The Case of the Missing Hare" - obscure all perspective. This has to be the least pleasant place for a cat to attack a dog, believing the dog to be a mouse! So this is far from a masterpiece, but the background should draw interest. Even more than the fact that it's Hubie and Bertie's debut. Jones branched out their personalities in "Mouse Wreckers", "Cheese Chasers" and "The Hypo-Chondri-Cat".

Well, after reading a couple of the other reviews here, I feel a little better. I thought maybe I missed something, thinking this animated short was pretty weak. Apparently, others agree.It might have been a landmark of sorts with the introduction of Claude The Cat and the two mice, Hubie (his name wasn't mentioned in this cartoon) and Bertie, but that doesn't mean it was entertaining. It wasn't, except for some of the artwork. This was the first of seven "Hubie and Bertie" cartoons.Claude was just not-funny stupid, and sadistic. Forced to fend for himself after "Meadows" the butler quits after being abused by the cat, Claude finds himself clueless. He has no idea how to do anything for himself. Apparently he doesn't even know what a mouse or a dog looks like, despite the fact there is a dog in the house.When he encounters the mice, he is scared out of his mind and runs for the hills. Finally, he winds up talking to them and they take advantage of the situation. Overall, this offers almost nothing in the way of laughs except one quick scene when Claude first meets the bulldog, face-to-face.

This cartoon tries, but it just misses the mark. Something about it simply doesn't quite gel, which is a shame. It has some good moments, but the whole is less than the sum of its parts. Because I want to discuss a few details, this is a spoiler warning: The short starts out promisingly enough, with the pampered cat of a rich dowager making the life of the butler, Meadows, an unhappy one. First, the cat squirts grapefruit juice in his eye and then causes him to slip on a bar of soap, each time laughing hysterically. So Meadows quits.The cat panics and begins searching for food and reads that cats are supposed to eat mice. He and Hubie (Hubie is a mouse) spot one another simultaneously and both are terrified. Hubie realizes the cat is frightened and learns that the cat doesn't know what a mouse looks like, so he introduces his pal Bert (another mouse) and then clues Bert in on their new "friend's" ignorance. They then convince him that a bulldog is actually a very large mouse. The cat tries to eat the bulldog, in what is probably the best visual scene in the short.Immediately after this scene, the short falls apart, probably because the cat then sees pictures of a mouse and a bulldog and realizes he's been tricked. At this point, the funniest premise in the short (a cat who doesn't recognize either mice or dogs) is removed as a plot device and nothing tangible is left to carry the rest of the short. for a good example of a much better use of the same characters where this mistake wasn't made and the short is infinitely the better because the funniest concept wasn't abruptly yanked away, watch Cheese Chasers, done eight years later.The ending to this short partially salvages the cartoon, but it could have been so much better than it finally turned out. Still, it is worth seeing for the characters. This short is available on the Looney Tunes Golden Collection, Volume 4, which is highly recommended.

A pampered cat is left in the care of the butler by his wealthy owner. After a few final humiliations by the cat, the butler quits and leaves the cat by himself. Unable to feed himself the cat looks up a book which tells him cats eat mice. He isn't sure what he is looking for and is unaware when two mice convince him that the local bulldog is a mouse and that he should easily catch and eat it.The set up to this short is quite interesting and should have led to a better cartoon, but, once the mice point out the dog then the cartoon seems to just die on it's feet. The action is standard and shows no imagination and not a great deal to laugh about. The film has a total lack of substance which, in something 4 minutes long, is a problem.The cat and dog characters are pretty weak but the mice are wise-asses and pretty amusing. Again it was just a shame that nothing of great value was done with them.