The Mouse on 57th Street (1961) User Reviews

...a fairly offbeat treat

[nnwahler · 6/10 · 3 March 2023]

This cartoon, incredibly, wasn't shown on national TV until 1988, on the Nickelodeon channel. It was part of Nick's post-1948 network TV Warner Brothers cartoon package, which included shorts which were banned by the three commercial networks over the decades. The last of these networks to have the rights to these cartoons was ABC (coming full circle, in essence). ABC had banned this film because of its subject of alcoholism (as well as nearly all Speedy Gonzales ones). At the end of the 1990s, Time/Warner had acquired the rights to every single Warner cartoon to be released before and after 1948, and had begun running them on their Cartoon Network and Boomerang channels.

Writers Michael Maltese and Warren Foster--Jones's and Freleng's head writers, respectively--left Warner's at the end of the 1950s to work for Hanna-Barbera's new television animation studio, which presumably gave them bigger paychecks. Jones had built up with Maltese a good backlog of stories, of varied degrees of completion, and these mostly held Jones in good stead through 1960--as well as the Road Runner cartoons he wrote himself.

However, the present film finds Jones perilously close to scraping the bottom of Maltese's idea barrel. Jones tries to compensate by stretching out the plot exposition: the camera panning at the beginning, from a jewelry store to a bakery with a rum cake, which a burrowing mouse gnaws from one end to the other, developing a horrible hangover. Unable to sleep the next morning, he overhears a couple of construction workers discussing the great "hunk of ice" in the jewelry shop window, the world's largest uncut diamond. Thinking this is the antidote, he takes the diamond and a huge crime ensues. A pair of bumbling cops pursue him--by this time half the film is over. The following two and a half minutes involve the chase that finally constitutes the dramatic meat of the film. Jones does everything he can to milk the obese, moronic cop's catch-phrase, "Duhhhh, O-BOY!! Da DIAMOND!!!!" as the dummo sabotages the smarter, short cop's best tries. The big lug finally repeatedly bops the little guy on the head (with the diamond attached), chasing him off into the sunset. The mouse retires to the bakery, resuming his self-destructive ways.

Hardly a classic, but amusing enough anyway. Its chief redeeming value is its offbeat nature.

Inescapable Escapade.

[Dawalk-1 · 10/10 · 13 December 2017]

I watched this short for the first time in years late last month online. Even though I hadn't seen it in years, once I finally saw it again, the familiarity and memories came flooding back. This is among the shorts I remember that aired and watched as part of Looney Tunes on Nickelodeon having grown up on it. I think this is another one of my more favored WB cartoon/Merrie Melodies shorts of the '60s, those directed by Chuck Jones, one-shots, and favorites in general. It was great seeing this again. I just learned that the title of this short is a play on the title of something else, like several other Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies shorts. Interesting.

This is a good, early '60s, Jones-directed short. It involves a muddled mouse who has a few mishaps, such as mistaking rum cake for cheese, causing him to end up drunk. Another instance is due to him being near a noisy construction site, he winds up getting a headache later and wears a diamond on his head, confusing it for a block of ice. That diamond had gone missing from a department store and two cops are on the case, and in pursuit to return it there. But not without them having any mishaps of their own. As a result, the mouse inadvertently ends up being in the midst of a caper.

Speaking on the technical aspects, the animation quality at this point is still good, as it usually was with other WB featurettes prior to those from the mid '60s DePatie-Freleng era and the late '60s W-7 Arts era. The scene with the mouse's head throbbing is a good example of a good animation moment. The appearance of his cranium in that scene may have inspired the design of the genius mouse, Brain, from Animaniacs and Pinky & The Brain. The art is fine, the colors, backgrounds, and layouts aren't too bad either. Concerning the comedy, the parts with the two cops are the highlights of this, as they play off each other well. The dim-witted out of the two, Muldoon, may have inspired Ralph the security guard, also from Animaniacs, as they remind me of each other. The music by Milt Franklin is as good as Carl Stalling's, but better than most of William Lava's compositions in the DFE and W7-Arts cartoons. The commonly used Raymond Scott's "Powerhouse", touches upon this well. I've always known of that familiar tune well, but I didn't know who composed that nor what the title of it was at the time. Something noteworthy of mentioning that I noticed is that though the name of the department store, Lacy's, is an evident play on the real department store, Macy's, an LT short, A Waggily Tale, features a department store with the name, Stacy's. It makes me wonder why a different rhyming name in each of those was used instead of sticking to just either one of them. The voice work, especially by Mel Blanc, is well done as normal. I consider it one of Jones's better material. Recommended.