Ant Pasted (1953)

Memorable, crazy movie

Best movie of this year hands down!

Blistering performances.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

. . . who are frequently misunderstood, molested, Smished, or Smushed by thoughtless people who often don't even eat their kills, leaving tons of ant meat annually to rot and foul the landscape (as well as the atmosphere) along our public by-ways, while loyal U.S. aardvarks go to bed hungry due to our murderous but non-consuming antics. "When have YOU gone out of your way to thank a member of any army ant troop for his service to our country?" ANT PASTED asks the viewer. When you see crackers such as Elmer Fudd in this story engage in ant bullying, are YOU more "See something, say something" OR "Snitches get Stitches"? Thoughtful people back to Antiquity have admired the Ant's great strength and industriousness. Who ever heard of a "cricket hill" or a "grasshopper hill"? Yet walking amongst us even today are serial ant slayers, including many Fat Cat self-styled "Exterminators," who behave like Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy rolled into one. With ANT PASTED, Warner Bros. is pleading for a truce and reconciliation with our ant neighbors. They may be small, but the Fourteenth Amendment says that they're still American Citizens with the same rights as YOU or I!

It's the Fourth of July and Elmer Fudd is looking to celebrate with a picnic and fireworks. When he decides to throw some of the fireworks at an ant hill "for fun," he starts a war he has no chance of winning. Elmer Fudd versus a colony of angry ants may not sound like the most exciting idea for a cartoon (and it isn't) but there are some laughs to be had here. Not many but some. Great voice work from Arthur Q. Bryan. Mel Blanc handles the voices of the ants but you wouldn't know it as their voices are sped up Chipmunk-style. That's actually one of the cartoon's bigger negatives, in my opinion. I thought the ant voices were annoying. The animation is crisp with lovely bright colors. Nice score from Carl Stalling. It's not a great short, to be honest. It's enjoyable enough but the ants aren't very funny, leaving most of the laughs to come from Elmer's buffoonery.

Usually, Elmer Fudd plays second banana to Bugs Bunny, so it's always eye-opening when he gets to be the lead role. In "Ant Pasted", he goes on a picnic for Fourth of July and starts lighting dynamite and throwing it at some nearby ants. Before too long, the formic co-stars have turned into bigger bad-asses than the ones in "Them!" ever dreamed of being.I agree with a previous reviewer that maybe they could have given the ants some more character, but otherwise, the whole cartoon's a hoot. And you'd better believe that they've got some neat stuff planned with the dynamite. When I was young, I always thought that the dynamite tricks were so cool, that one year, I even went out as a stick of dynamite for Halloween! Nowadays, that would probably lead to an arrest.Anyway, this is one of the many cartoons that show why the Looney Tunes were truly the gold standard of their day. I imagine that the people making the cartoon probably had lots of fun creating it. Cool.

Elmer Fudd decides to go on a small camping trip for the fourth of July and takes lots of fireworks with him to celebrate. As he starts to set them off he ends up bothering an ant hill - and then throws them at the ants for fun. However the bugs are organised and mobilise an army to repel Fudd.Elmer Fudd is more of a supporting player than a leading man, so as the film starts it was a bit of a worry. Despite this worry the film actually managed to be quite funny and fast moving. The battle between Fudd and the ants has lots of routines you'll recognise and it pretty much uses every `stick of dynamite' gag you'll have seen. It moves pretty fast and that is part of it's appeal - even if one scene doesn't work that well, it's only a matter of seconds before the next one comes along.Fudd is OK but he struggled a little at times with the weight of carrying the film. The ants do reasonably well but they don't have that much of a character and, even worse it's really difficult to understand what they are saying at times.Overall this film feels like it needs a big name in the cast to really raise it a bit, but the minor players do well and still produce a fun little cartoon.