Porky's Road Race

Porky Pig has always been a likable and amusing character, if with a tendency to be overshadowed by characters with stronger personalities, and Frank Tashlin was responsible for a lot of very good to great cartoons but is somewhat under-appreciated.

This cartoon, 'Porky's Road Race', is particularly notable and of historical interest for the debut of the peerless Mel Blanc, one of the greatest and most prolific voice actors who ever lived. He does a great job as always. The rest of the voice acting, though personally am not a fan of Joe Dougherty's Porky voice, is very good. 'Porky's Road Race' has many other things going for it too.

Animation is of high quality, very fluid and detailed with smooth movements and pristine black and white. The music is lively, characterful with lush orchestration and clever instrumentation, dynamic with the action and even elevating it.

It is a very funny cartoon too, very snappily written and it was so much fun recognising the famous faces taking form of caricatures. This was a case of being familiar with them all, and there was not an obvious weak gag and it holds up better than a lot of early caricature cartoons. The final battle between Porky and the Boris Karloff-inspired character is indeed the highlight.

For all these fine things however, the story doesn't quite have enough to sustain the cartoon's length. Porky also doesn't have enough material to give him a distinct personality and it is not too inspired, he is overshadowed by the far more memorable caricatures.

In conclusion, good and entertaining cartoon but there are cartoons with better representations of Porky around. 8/10 Bethany Cox