Watching Dick Whittington's Cat: A Strange Little Cartoon

Is it worth your time?

If you have a weird itch to see how they animated rodents in the early days of cartoons, sure. It’s short enough that you won’t lose a whole afternoon. If you aren't into grainy, older animation styles, you’re probably going to find it exhausting.

Honestly, the whole thing feels like a fever dream. The cat just shows up and starts dealing with rats, and the scale of it all feels really disjointed.

There’s this one sequence where the rats just... won't stop appearing. They’re everywhere. It’s kind of impressive how many of them they crammed into the frame, but it gets claustrophobic pretty fast.

Billy Bletcher is doing his thing, and if you’ve seen Life's Last Laughs No. 4, you know that specific, raspy energy he brings. It’s unmistakable, even when he’s voicing a cat in a weird historical fairy tale adaptation.

The pacing is all over the place. One minute we are setting the scene, and the next, the cat is just spiraling through a city of vermin. It reminded me a bit of the frantic energy in A Moonshine Feud, just with more whiskers and fewer moonshine stills.

Odd Observations:

• The rats have these weird, blank eyes. They don't look scary, just kind of vacant.
• I don't think the physics of how the cat moves was fully calculated. Sometimes he just floats over the scenery.
• There’s a background painting that looks like it was sketched in about three minutes flat.
• I’m still not sure why the cat decided to take this job. There’s no pay mentioned.

It’s not trying to be a deep, cinematic masterpiece. It’s a cartoon about a cat doing a job. Sometimes that’s enough. But man, the sheer number of rats in this thing really starts to stick with you after it ends.

If you like animation that feels a bit unhinged and doesn't care about making total sense, give it a go. Just don't go in expecting the polish you'd see in something like The Speckled Band. This is a totally different, messier beast.

I wonder if the animators got tired of drawing tails? There are just so many tails. 🐭