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Fresh and Exciting

As Good As It Gets

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

This is a cartoon in the Fox and the Crow series and was produced by UPA studio. There will be spoilers ahead: When UPA got hired by Columbia to produce animated shorts for them, a condition of this was that they use the characters of the Fox and the Crow. UPA did three cartoons with the character, with the first Magoo cartoon produced in that stretch. Punchy De Leon was the fourth cartoon produced and it's both a typical Fox and Crow cartoon and a typical UPA cartoon. It's possibly the weakest of the three shorts produced by UPA, it's still an extremely good cartoon.Fox and Crow are partners when they see a poster offering a reward for the Fountain of Youth and they decide to run a scam on the king. They try to con the king, but he wants proof before he pays them. He asks where the fountain is and they come up with "Florida". They become rivals when the king offers a reward to whichever on brings proof back first.Most of the rest of the short is the two one-upping each other in an attempt to get back first. They actually find the fountain and there are some great gags as first Crow and then Fox try to get water from the fountain. They then proceed to cheat, steal and con each other in an effort to win. The gags are great, so I won't spoil them here.They get back and they're still wrestling each other when they appear before the king again. The closing gag is vintage UPA and fits with the series. It's a good note on which to end the series.This short is available on DVD as part of a set of UPA Jolly Frolics cartoons and it and the set are well worth getting. Recommended.

Nine years after their debut in The Fox and the Grapes, The Fox and Crow made their last theatrical cartoon for Columbia (and third for UPA) with this, Punchy de Leon. As you've probably guessed by the title, this short concerns the efforts of the leading characters to find the Fountain of Youth for the king of Spain. Some amusing animation gags abound in the two competitors' efforts of oneupmanship of each other though the topper comes at the end which, if you've seen many of similar cartoons, you'll figure out right away. While this was indeed the final animated appearance of these now-obscure characters, The Fox and Crow would continue in comic book form for DC for at least 18 more years. By the way, though no credit of him is on this IMDb listing, that certainly sounds like Daws Butler's southern voice that he later used for Huckleberry Hound briefly coming out of the Crow's mouth when he poses as a toll guard!