Watch Little Beau Porky For Free

Beautiful, moving film.

It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

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

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

Little Beau Porky (1936) ** 1/2 (out of 4) Porky joins the foreign legion but he's upset to learn that he can't fight but instead he's given various boring chores that just don't sit too well with the pig.There are a lot of Arab stereotypes as you might expect from a cartoon made in 1936 but this really doesn't hurt or help the film much. On the whole this here is one of the lesser Porky Pig shorts that were made up to this point because there's really not too much of a story going on and sadly there aren't too many laughs either. The highlight of the film is a scene later in the picture involving a horse but I won't give too much away to prevent the gag from being ruined. As you'd expect there's some nice animation and it moves at a nice pace but there's still not too much here.

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

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.

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.