Deanna
There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.
Juana
what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.
Roxie
The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;
Edgar Allan Pooh
. . . to Our America of the Future in this 1936 Looney Tune, LITTLE BEAU PORKY. PORKY's action opens with a fort depicted in the middle of an otherwise empty desert. Obviously, this edifice is meant to symbolize Fortress America, the "City on a Hill" since its very founding. As he often does, Porky himself plays Yankee Doodle, the World's Disrespected Whipping Boy. Soon all the dog soldiers peopling this fort pack up and leave (many viewers today will identify these feckless canines as Current Day NATO members, whom President-Elect Trump has fingered as shirkers and malingerers all along.) So like us, Porky is "An Army of One" when Middle Eastern Terrorists invade Fortress America. (Ask yourself, where was NATO when 9-11 went down? Or Fort Hood, San Bernardino, and Orlando? Totally A.W.O.L., that's where!) But as the plucky Porky decides to Be All He Can Be, the insurgent Arabs here topple like dominoes. Kids of the 1900s probably wondered why Warner was seeing off their older brothers to fight Germany and Japan with a cartoon set in a desert. Today's tots should be able to see the light easier.
TheLittleSongbird
Porky is not one of WB/Looney Tunes' strongest or funniest characters and his effectiveness as a lead character has been a mixed bag but he is likable and works very well as a support character with other stronger personalities. Here he takes on a lead role, and is quite funny and endearing. And Little Beau Porky has a huge amount to enjoy, Frank Tashlin was a great if underrated animation director and you can see that clearly. It does have a couple of drawbacks, the pacing is not always consistent with a build up that sets things up a little too slowly and a slightly rushed ending and somehow it does feel odd without the presence of Mel Blanc, Joe Dougherty tries his best as Porky but his stutter has always been overdone to me. The Arab stereotyping will go either way too, I personally wasn't offended but others might. The animation is fluid, well drawn and shaded/coloured with care. The camera angles are very clever and are the prime reason why Tashlin is deserving of more recognition. Carl Stalling's music score is lush and full of character, accentuating every gag and character gesture, and the dialogue even early on has freshness and sharpness. The gags come thick and fast at a wild pace, there are a healthy amount and all of them are funny, the best particularly with the camel uproarious. The pacing is generally solid, and the story while a tad predictable entertains, while the supporting characters compliment Porky well(especially Ali Mode). Billy Bletcher provides witty vocals. All in all, hugely enjoyable though Porky has done better. 8/10 Bethany Cox
Lee Eisenberg
Current events in the Middle East give us Americans an incentive to watch Porky Pig's early cartoon "Little Beau Porky". This one came out back when the famously stuttering swine was less than two years old and looked like a walking heart attack (and Joe Dougherty was still providing his voice, as Warner Bros. hadn't yet hired Mel Blanc).Anyway, the plot goes something like this. Porky is a soldier in a foreign legion outpost in either the Arabian desert or the Sahara. He always gets the most menial jobs and isn't allowed to participate in missions to trap the dastardly sheik Ali Mode (the Termite Terrace crowd loved to give people crazy, pun names, didn't they?). But when Ali Mode - who bears a mild resemblance to Osama bin Laden - attacks the fort, Porky pretty much becomes Rambo.Obviously, the Arab stereotyping makes it a little harder to laugh at this cartoon. It's mostly funny just because of some of the gags they pull. As long as we understand the stereotyping, then it's a pretty entertaining cartoon.Back when they made this cartoon, they probably never imagined that sixty to seventy years later, a lot of the world's focus would center on the Middle East. "Syriana" should explain it all.
Robert Reynolds
This short has Porky as a military man, with the job of scrubbing camels and not much else. Because I want to discuss this in a little detail, this is a spoiler warning: Porky Pig is a soldier in the Foreign Legion, though he isn't a terribly good one. He's given the assignment of scrubbing the Commandant's camel and the camel outwits him badly! When the command is ordered out to track down and capture the dreaded Ali Mode, Porky is contemptuously left behind as a "camel scrubber".Naturally, once the command rides out, where do Ali Mode and his men decide to attack? If you said "The fort where Porky is", you get a gold star for your paper. Ali Mode first tries to trick Porky and when that fails, starts issuing orders in Pig-Latin to his followers.What follows is a very well animated series of combat gags, including a few repeat gags (one poor guy really needs to move away from his spot next to the well) and culminating in the capture of Ali Mode by Porky and the camel, who work in tandem for once. The dialog coming from Ali Mode is hilarious! The cartoon ends with Porky and the camel getting their well-earned reward. This short is available on the Looney Tunes Golden Collection, Volume 4 and is well worth having. Recommended.
