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A lot more amusing than I thought it would be.

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

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.

Porky's Railroad (1937) ** 1/2 (out of 4)Decent, if nothing overly special, short has Porky Pig traveling around in his 15th Century train when a newer, faster 30th Century challenges him to a race.PORKY'S RAILROAD is pretty slim on story and I'd also argue that there really aren't too many laughs either. The short manages to be slightly entertaining thanks to the very good animation, which is certainly the highlight. I'd say that Porky is in fine shape and manages to hold your attention as he talks to his train and keeps trying to make it do better than it actually should.

Directed by Frank Tashlin, "Porky's Railroad" is a delightful Porky Pig cartoon in which Porky is the engineer of his own locomotive, the 15th Century Unlimited, which he nicknames "Toots".Here are my favorite sequences from this cartoon. Wonderfully voiced by Mel Blanc, Porky struggles in coaxing a cow to not sit on the railroad tracks. At the opening of this film, Porky operates his slow, broken-down train to an equally slow accompaniment of "California, Here I Come"; he adds a pepper shaker to the engine, and the train suddenly SPEEDS, and so does the music. And when Porky's train jumps the opened drawbridge, I am reminded of the live-action comedy "The Blues Brothers" (1980), in which a humble automobile does the same thing!Catch "Porky's Railroad" on the Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume 4 Disc 2, a disc that specializes in the directing style of Frank Tashlin.

Frank Tashlin's 'Porky's Railroad' is one of the lesser black and white Porky Pig cartoons. Tashlin directed many of the finest of these early Porkys but sometimes the script would let him down. This is very much the case in the interminably dull 'Porky's Railroad', although Tashlin makes a few odd choices himself. The cartoon opens with a lot of on screen captions and Tashlin accompanies them with some weird use of slow-motion. There follows a string of crummy gags (broken up by a rather lovely aerial view sequence) before the main storyline kicks in, with Porky taking part in a race with a more powerful train. This feeble plot, despite a surprisingly sad ending, throws up few moments of interest and, despite some unusual camera angles and a gallant attempt to inject some pace, Tashlin never manages to make 'Porky's Railroad' come to life. The result is a pedestrian pig picture, one of several lacklustre cartoons with the generic title 'Porky's...fill in occupation'!

This is a very good cartoon that I intend to watch many times more in the future, but for now I will publish these modest comments based on my experience of having seen it only once. What strikes me as shocking about 'Porky's Railroad' is its absolutely -- even brutally, I should say -- honest depiction of the soul of man under capitalism -- to paraphrase the title of that famous book by Oscar Wilde -- which I unfortunately have not read yet. The first shot establishes the state-of-the-art in trains -- one that would look modern even by today's standards. Then, the film switches to Porky's obsolete -- and barely functional -- model. It is interesting then how the film establishes Porky's character as sentimentally attached to his old train, but not anti-technology at all: for him, machines have precedence over animals. The race that ensues is the necessary conflict that precedes the shocking -- and of an unbridled cynicism -- ending that carries to the last consequences the truism that sentimentality has no place in a technological capitalist society -- Porky wins the race but is not allowed to keep his train; instead he is promoted to machinist of the new one, and is soon bursting with joy. Obsolescence happens to trains as well as to people -- the old machinist goes to the 'garbage can' just as Porky's old train.