'Yankee Doodle Cricket' is a low-budget animated film with a fairly atypical setting: the American Revolution. The animals in this cartoon talk to each other but are drawn realistically. There are the usual economic short cuts, typical of cartoons: for example, a brief sequence of the cat walking down a road with the cricket on his back is repeated at several points during this toon. The cheapness of the animation is forgivable; somewhat less forgivable is its general shoddiness. The cat is drawn like a realistic cat, but he walks with a peculiar goose-stepping gait that doesn't remotely resemble actual feline movements.
In several other IMDb reviews, I've made clear my very strong dislike for Chuck Jones, who directed 'Yankee Doodle Cricket'. My dislike is partially personal: Jones consistently took credit for other animators' innovations, and belittled the importance of his collaborators. But my dislike of Chuck Jones's cartoons is also for artistic reasons: Jones had a very small bag of tricks and narrative techniques, and he repeated himself far more often than did his contemporaries such as Clampett, Freleng, Tashlin and the sadly underrated Robert McKimson. I'm angry that Jones took one of the most unique and distinctive books ever written -- 'The Phantom Tollbooth', by Norton Juster -- and turned it into a Chuck Jones cartoon that looked like a hundred other Chuck Jones cartoons.
'Yankee Doodle Cricket' is not very funny, but (to its credit) it tries to tell a story rather than offer slapstick gags. There is one very strained 'joke' in this cartoon which I found especially annoying, and a strong example of the self-indulgence which taints all of Chuck Jones's work. Harry the cat is present in Thomas Jefferson's study while Jefferson attempts to write the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson keeps coming up with various opening phrases (which he speaks aloud as his quill pen writes them down), but in each case he crumples the paper (parchment?) and tosses it onto the floor near Harry. The 'joke' here -- a weak one -- is that each of these anachronistic phrases is associated with some U.S. President (a different one each time) who came *after* Jefferson.
The 'payoff' to this gag is very weak indeed. After rejecting half a dozen other phrases, Jefferson comes up with 'Let me make one thing perfectly clear.' (This phrase is associated with Richard Nixon ... but did he ever actually say it?) This one, too, Jefferson crumples up and tosses onto the mounting pile of crumpled pages alongside Harry the cat. But Nixon's phrase, and *only* Nixon's phrase, is now hastily batted away by Harry the cat. Chuck Jones never made a secret of his hatred for Richard Nixon, but I'm annoyed that he came up with this immensely contrived sequence in order to slip a Nixon-bashing joke into a cartoon about the American Revolution.
Apart from Jones's strenuous efforts to bash Nixon, there's a general laziness here. Voice work is supplied by June Foray and Mel Blanc, providing exactly the same voices they've supplied in countless other Jones cartoons: Foray does her bog-standard twee-granny voice, and Blanc does his Barney Rubble with no frills. There are a couple of good points in 'Yankee Doodle Cricket', but they're few and far between. I'll rate this toon 2 out of 10. Cartoon fans, skip 'Yankee Doodle Cricket' and watch Disney's 'Ben and Me' -- about a mouse's adventures with Benjamin Franklin -- instead.
UPDATE: Memo to IMDb reviewer C.C. Krieg: I pay taxes in the USA for income I earn on my Stateside investments, and I'm well familiar with U.S. sitcoms from the Nixon era; plenty of them show up on British television. I agree with you about the Clinton administration, which is by far the most corrupt to date.
In several other IMDb reviews, I've made clear my very strong dislike for Chuck Jones, who directed 'Yankee Doodle Cricket'. My dislike is partially personal: Jones consistently took credit for other animators' innovations, and belittled the importance of his collaborators. But my dislike of Chuck Jones's cartoons is also for artistic reasons: Jones had a very small bag of tricks and narrative techniques, and he repeated himself far more often than did his contemporaries such as Clampett, Freleng, Tashlin and the sadly underrated Robert McKimson. I'm angry that Jones took one of the most unique and distinctive books ever written -- 'The Phantom Tollbooth', by Norton Juster -- and turned it into a Chuck Jones cartoon that looked like a hundred other Chuck Jones cartoons.
'Yankee Doodle Cricket' is not very funny, but (to its credit) it tries to tell a story rather than offer slapstick gags. There is one very strained 'joke' in this cartoon which I found especially annoying, and a strong example of the self-indulgence which taints all of Chuck Jones's work. Harry the cat is present in Thomas Jefferson's study while Jefferson attempts to write the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson keeps coming up with various opening phrases (which he speaks aloud as his quill pen writes them down), but in each case he crumples the paper (parchment?) and tosses it onto the floor near Harry. The 'joke' here -- a weak one -- is that each of these anachronistic phrases is associated with some U.S. President (a different one each time) who came *after* Jefferson.
The 'payoff' to this gag is very weak indeed. After rejecting half a dozen other phrases, Jefferson comes up with 'Let me make one thing perfectly clear.' (This phrase is associated with Richard Nixon ... but did he ever actually say it?) This one, too, Jefferson crumples up and tosses onto the mounting pile of crumpled pages alongside Harry the cat. But Nixon's phrase, and *only* Nixon's phrase, is now hastily batted away by Harry the cat. Chuck Jones never made a secret of his hatred for Richard Nixon, but I'm annoyed that he came up with this immensely contrived sequence in order to slip a Nixon-bashing joke into a cartoon about the American Revolution.
Apart from Jones's strenuous efforts to bash Nixon, there's a general laziness here. Voice work is supplied by June Foray and Mel Blanc, providing exactly the same voices they've supplied in countless other Jones cartoons: Foray does her bog-standard twee-granny voice, and Blanc does his Barney Rubble with no frills. There are a couple of good points in 'Yankee Doodle Cricket', but they're few and far between. I'll rate this toon 2 out of 10. Cartoon fans, skip 'Yankee Doodle Cricket' and watch Disney's 'Ben and Me' -- about a mouse's adventures with Benjamin Franklin -- instead.
UPDATE: Memo to IMDb reviewer C.C. Krieg: I pay taxes in the USA for income I earn on my Stateside investments, and I'm well familiar with U.S. sitcoms from the Nixon era; plenty of them show up on British television. I agree with you about the Clinton administration, which is by far the most corrupt to date.