This review originally appeared on the now-defunct site FamilyWonder.com, which showcased children's entertainment for parents and caregivers.
Grade: B
Title: TWEETY'S HIGH-FLYING ADVENTURE
Year: Warner Bros., 2000
Running Time: 1 hour 10 minutes
Video Summary:
To save a local park, Granny bets the Colonel that Tweety can fly around the world in 80 days, collecting visas and cat paw prints as proof of his exploits. Setting off from London with Sylvester already plotting his demise, Tweety snowboards in the Alps, chases cat mummies through an Egyptian tomb, saves a pretty canary from a Himalayan peace cult, and para-sails from Australia to San Francisco.
But when nasty desert cats attack and a hurricane nearly kills his new friend, Tweety realizes he's been too concerned about winning the bet and too little interested in the people who care about him. The brave bird must collect his paw-prints and get to London safely before Sylvester gets him thrown in jail for stealing a royal passport.
Best For Ages:
6-8 - Kids this age will enjoy Tweety's adventures, but some parents may object to the violence.
9-12 - Fans of Warner Bros. cartoons will like this new adventure yet may wish there were more substance to the travelogue.
Parental Advisory:
Educational Value: Out to recess. Some background classical music.
Entertainment Value: Cameos by Daffy Duck, Marvin the Martian, and other Warner Bros. regulars enliven the adventure story, which features two big song-and-dance numbers as well as traditional background classical music.
Violence: Nearly every scene features cartoon assaults. Animals half-eat one another, get hit on the head with heavy objects, tear at one another with their claws, and trap each other in mechanical devices.
Frightening Situations: Very young children may be afraid of the hungry Tasmanian Devil, as well as the hurricane in which Tweety gets lost.
Questionable Behavior: Cartoons misuse extreme sports equipment, stow away on boats, and hijack a trolley car. A public sign labels one character a moron. The plot hinges on gambling.
Racial/Gender Insensitivity: Tweety must repeatedly rescue his new girlfriend. Pepe LePew harasses a protesting Sylvester. Most nations and cultures are portrayed via geographically ludicrous stereotypes.
Review:
TWEETY'S HIGH-FLYING ADVENTURE contains many elements of nostalgic Warner Bros. cartoon collections, but despite the cat jokes and use of Mozart's 40th Symphony as background music during a chase scene, it lacks the sophistication of many classic installments. This won't bother young viewers unfamiliar with the little bird, but long-time fans may miss Sylvester's plotting and Granny's obliviousness.
What the cartoon lacks in clever dialogue, it tries to make up with action. The characters try many extreme sports, including hang-gliding, all-terrain bicycling, skateboarding, and riding shotgun on a trolley car headed for Alcatraz. Visually, viewers will be engaged by the fast pace and the innovative artwork which attempts to draw in cultural influences from the places Tweety visits -- Africa looks like the colorful jungle from THE LION KING, Paris like an Impressionist painting.
Kids laugh aloud at the typical dropping anvils and frying pans to the head, but parents may not appreciate comedy about peaceful Buddhist cats that burn canaries alive, nor the South American geography which places the Andes next to Buenos Aires and a soccer ball in the middle of a visa from Argentina. The athleticism may have been updated, but the limited cultural world-view of 1940s cartoons remains in this new addition.
Adults will appreciate the clever rhyming of city names in the big opening song, plus various cat puns, a Looney Network News parody, and Daffy's demand for his own feature film. Unfortunately, by the time Tweety gets done taking the long way home -- from China to Mexico to Japan to the US -- most viewers will be glad to see the journey's end.
BUGS BUNNY SUPERSTAR makes an excellent introduction to the characters and cartoons of Warner Bros.' golden age, featuring Tweety and Sylvester in the classic "I Taw a Putty Tat." BIG TOP BUNNY, a collection that spans several decades of Bugs' career, shows how the cartoons evolved over time.
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