Speedy Gonzales (1955)

Powerful

Please don't spend money on this.

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

. . . there was no need to wait until the 2016 U.S. Presidential Primaries to find out. Long before any American had even heard of Trump or Cruz, Warner Bros. was predicting trouble along the Southern U.S. Border as early as the animated short SPEEDY GONZALEZ from the Mid-1950s. Warner uses rodents to represent Mexican citizens eager to steal the fruits of American Labor and Industry. These lazy creatures are portrayed as not lifting a finger to produce their own food, harboring the sole interest of illegally crossing our border to steal our stuff. Their entire survival is dependent upon filching food from the American Working Class. Warner uses Sylvester Cat to symbolize the heroic American Border Guards risking Injury & Death to stand as a Last Line of Defense against the Economic Terrorists to the South. About 1:38 into this story, Sylvester adds "Manuel's" sombrero to those of at least 7 other Mexicans (and more likely 50 or 100) that this extraordinary border nemesis has dispatched so far. Then a new racing robber literally tears Sylvester a new one. Warner then suggests that the only way to protect our cheese (or the Wealth of America) from these rapacious Mini-Rats to the South is to create a No Man's Land with a full stock of land mines and other defenses. But Milhouse Nixon turned a blind eye toward SPEEDY GONZALEZ, and now an expensive wall must be built.

Don't take my title the wrong way, I don't hate Speedy Gonzales(the fastest mouse in all Mexico, as we now know him today), far from it, but his cartoons have been hit and miss. Some have been surprisingly good and funny, but others suffer from lacklustre, rushed animation and from being predictable. Speedy Gonzales is actually one of the better Speedy cartoons, actually worth watching. The animation is not too bad here, not absolutely brilliant but it is one of the better-looking Speedy cartoons. The music is nice too, as are the visual gags and dialogue. The story is simple but decently-structured, Speedy is funny and tolerable and Sylvester is a worthy foil(better at it than Daffy I'd say). These characters are all brought to life by the unique vocal talents of Mel Blanc, who does brilliantly as always. Overall, definitely worth seeing. 9/10 Bethany Cox

This is a great little cartoon featuring one of my childhood favourites; Speedy Gonzales, the fastest mouse in all of Mexico.The cartoon opens outside the Ajax cheese company warehouse, a group of Mexican mice are at the fence drawing lots to see which of them will run in and try to get some cheese without being caught by Sylvester the cat. Manuel draws the short straw and hand his sombrero to another mouse before rushing in. Judging by the reaction of the mice he doesn't survive and his sombrero is thrown onto a pile of hats. One on the mice says his sister is a friend of Speedy Gonzales to which another mouse retorts that everybody's sister knows speedy. The mouse goes off and returns with Speedy. Speedy has much better luck, nothing Sylvester does to stop him succeeds, not nets, not traps nor land mines... eventually he plans to lure Speedy in with a huge pile of cheese which he has packed with TNT, he detonates it too soon and the cheese rains down on the grateful mice.I enjoyed everything about this cartoon; Speedy and his friends' dodgy Mexican accents, the slightly racy joke about him being friends with everybody's sisters and Sylvester's increasingly desperate attempts to stop him... a must for all fans of Warner Brother's cartoons.

Speedy Gonzales (1955) ** 1/2 (out of 4) A group of Mexican mice are having trouble breaking into a cheese factory because none of them are faster than the guard, Sylvester the cat. With nothing left to do they hire Speedy Gonzales to steal some of the cheese. I might take a beating for this but I've never been a fan of Speedy and I might go even further as to call him my least favorite of all the popular animated stars no matter what studio they're from. I've always found him to be all one-joke but there are a couple good moments here. Having Sylvester in the mix brings a few laughs as he will stop at nothing to try and catch Speedy but of course we know he's going to fail. The stereotypes of Mexicans has been discussed to death so I'll just jump over that.