Porky and Teabiscuit (1939)

Really Surprised!

Lack of good storyline.

It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

Porky Pig, while with a tendency to be overshadowed by funnier and more interesting adversaries or supporting characters, is still a likable and amusing character. 'Porky and Teabiscuit' is not one of his best cartoons but is decent enough and passes the time amiably.The second half is better than the first half. The second half is dominated by the race, which is where 'Porky and Teabiscuit' really does come to life, with the wildness, insane looniness, imagination and razor-sharp wit one expects from Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies being hugely entertaining and thrilling. The first half is less good, the draggy pacing doesn't have the lustre as seen later on and it does try a little too hard to be cute and it feels a little mawkish. Porky is likable enough if also a bit bland.Animation on the other hand is great. The black and white colours are lovingly done, the drawing is fluid and smooth and the backgrounds have some very nice detail. The music score by Carl Stalling is bursting with lively character, beautiful orchestration, clever instrumentation and an unmatched ability to enhance the action and elevate material to a greater level.While stronger in the second half, 'Porky and Teabiscuit' is fun and witty enough and Mel Blanc as ever does a fantastic job with the voice work in multiple roles, all given completely different identities and voices from one another.On the whole, not one of my favourites and somewhat uneven but still worth watching. 7/10 Bethany Cox

Little did these animators know how famous "Seabiscuit" would become almost 70 years later, thanks to a best-selling book and feature movie about the great horse of the '30s.Anyway, we see a fairly young Porky Pig in this cartoon, a kid who works for his dad Phineas (who stutters the same as Porky). The "kid" loves horse racing and races his little toy horse - yet he's old enough to drive a car! Oh, well.He goes into town to deliver feed to the stables at the track and collect $11 for it. Then, he accidentally winds up purchasing an old, broken-down horse, "Teabuscuit" for the 11 bucks. Oh, man, his pop is going to kill him when he finds out.However, you just know something will work out, that the old beat-up but face-liking likable horse will do something good to bail out Porky.This winds up being a "cute" cartoon, more than it is funny. The actual race was wild and insane, but not really anything that would provoke a big laugh. It's a passable animated short, decent but nothing great.

"Porky and Teabiscuit" is a very good black-and-white Warner Bros. cartoon starring our favorite sweet-natured pig Porky. Porky's father Phineas (who stutters just as profusely as Porky does) sends Porky to a racetrack to deliver some feed and collect eleven dollars, which he inadvertently blows on a broken-down, half-starved horse named Teabiscuit. But Porky is determined to recover his money by entering Teabiscuit in the steeplechase and being the jockey.Although nothing about this cartoon really makes it stand out, "Porky and Teabiscuit" is still an entertaining film with at least a couple of memorable moments. Teabiscuit becomes fed up with a competing horse's rear end blocking his path, so he bites the horse's tail! And Teabiscuit has a peculiar attraction to trombones as he observes & listens with a funny smile on his face; when last seen, Teabiscuit tries to play a trombone himself! In closing, Carl Stalling's excellent music score for "Porky and Teabiscuit" bears mentioning. The popular song "Jeepers Creepers" can be heard when Porky delivers the feed to the racetrack and collects his money. (This may have been a direct reference to the live-action feature film "Going Places" [1938], in which the great Louis Armstrong sings "Jeepers Creepers" to a racehorse.) In addition, "She Was an Acrobat's Daughter" can be heard during the auction scene.

This short is one of the earlier Porky Pig shorts and falls into the "Porky as a kid" category, which was a fairly frequent gimmick in the first few years. There may be spoilers in my remarks below: In a few Porky shorts featuring Porky as a child, the plot device of "Porky is given money by his dad, with strict orders to do something specific, but something goes haywire" was used. This was one of those shorts, which are fairly predictable. Our hero winds up buying (by Standard Accident # 43 in the Cartoonist's Handbook) a horse which would fail the physical at a glue factory. Given that our hero doesn't relish the idea of returning home for a trip to the woodshed, he decides to enter a race to win the prize money, so he can go home covered in glory rather than fertilizer.Our hero lucks out, in spite of troubles, travails and trombones, passes "Go", collects his $11 and his horse is happy in the end as well and on his way to audition for John Philip Sousa.This short is on Looney Toons Golden Collection, Vol 3. Though it's largely a routine and by-the-numbers cartoon, it is worth seeing and the Collection is excellent. Recommended.