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ON THIS DVDs THEY ARE GOING TO ADD ( The Bear family )???AND WHERE ARE ( The Bear family )CARTOONS ON DVD???THANKS HARLEY
Rating: 5 / 5
Just wanted to stop by here and say I loved the first woody set and just bought this one. Personally I like some of the more obscure cartoons that aren’t woody. On volume one I loved the swing symphonies. And I really love that Oswald short Spooks. It’d be cool if they’d make a universal Oswald set. It would go nice with my Disney Oswald set. Anyway, looking forward to seeing more Woody soon. Heh Heh Heh Heh Heh!
Rating: 5 / 5
absolutly great is better than the first one vol 1 i was so happy to get it
Rating: 5 / 5
I loved Woody Woodpecker as a child and since my 4 year old loves Tom & Jerry & Bugs Bunny, I fugured she might like this too. I was so right! She loves this DVD set. I was not worried it might look grainy or have bad sound but it is great. I had doubts at first because of the price but you get three DVD’s and since she loves it, it’s so worth the money. I’m also happy we can watch it together and equally enjoy it.
Rating: 5 / 5
As many have pointed out, this set marks the beginning of the much-maligned Paul J. Smith era of Woody Woodpecker, which begins with Hot Noon (or 12 O’Clock for Sure). This cartoon suffers from having the opening gag repeated at the end (Woody plays piano, Woody gets kissed by his questionably stereotypical Mexican girlfriend, Woody is dazzled) and is thoroughly unremarkable. It is not a good sign.
But Don Patterson’s Woody shorts, the remainder of which are on disc 1, are quite good. The set opens with Termites from Mars, one of the better 50′s shorts, followed by the excellent Under the Counter Spy and Convict Concerto, Patterson’s last Woody short as a director (although he is only credited as an animator for it, and would continue to animate shorts for a while). The latter is a special one; it features Woody playing the Hungarian Rhapsody, which seems to be the only piano-written piece of classical music used in classic cartoons like these. It is probably the last real masterpiece Woody short, as all shorts after this are either decent or mediocre. Case in point…
At the immediate start of disc 2, we are thrown smack-dab into the beginning of the era where Paul J. Smith directed virtually all Woody cartoons (which would eventually morph in the late 60′s into ALL Lantz cartoons), with 1955′s Helter Shelter. Most of the gags are pointless and absurd. An example: the man of the house in this cartoon sleepwalks and gets up to have a full-fledged meal of turkey and ketchup for no reason other than it’s crucial to the gag. I don’t want to spoil too much, but Woody ends up imitating a bottle of ketchup by saying “Gurgle-gurgle-gurgle!”, and the man ends up eating a clock. This cartoon also uses a ridiculous Chinese stereotype at one point (dog gets bashed in head with cymbal, acts Chinese). I wouldn’t have a problem with this if it weren’t for the fact that it’s been used before to better effect, and the gag literally comes out of nowhere in this cartoon. It’s just as abrupt and obnoxious as the final scene of Damien: Omen II (better to pick a mediocre movie to compare it to).
I make this sound awfully harsh for a four-star review, but consider this: the Chilly Willy shorts included here are pretty good, including Half-Baked Alaska, a real gem from the plethora of mediocrity from whence it came (1965, to be specific). Also, not all Paul J. cartoons are mediocre; I found the most recent Woody short on the set, Jittery Jester, to be utterly hysterical. Paul J.’s shorts are also much, much better than the 1990′s Fox Kids revival of Woody, which I recall seeing in their original broadcasts here in Canada on YTV. Long story short: every joke landed with a resounding thud.
But that’s not in this set, and for that we should be thankful. What is in this set is very, very good for the most part, and the audio and video quality are vastly improved from the first set (so no more hissy sound and scratchy video to worry about). This set comes recommended with the caveat that the cartoons begin to drop in quality as time goes on. It is best regarded as a companion to the first set, and a good one at that.
Rating: 4 / 5