"High Note" is an American cartoon from 1960, so this one has its 60th anniversary soon and it was nominated for an Oscar. This would have been the actually first nomination for animation legend Chuck Jones, but no name is credited with the nomination, so he had to wait a little longer till it inevitably happened. Jones by the way not even 50 when this was made, even if it is a work from way after the glory days of the Golden Age of Animation in America. So you could call it a bit of an epilogue. No ducks, rabbits, no shooting or anything else that you know so well from these many many Warner Bros and Looney Toons short films, but this one here is entirely different. Not in a good way though I would say. The first half, a bit of an introduction felt incredibly forgettable. When the drunk note appears in the second half, it gets slightly better. The egg-hatching moment was fun, the dog wasn't bad either. In general it seemed as if they tried to get many animals in here, later on also a horse, but that did not feel too right. Same goes for the drunk note jumping around and the plot twist with all the other notes getting drunk too at the end is mildly amusing at best. I would not say this was a really funny or entertaining watch. Felt mostly disappointing to me. You cannot deny the creativity, but some of the connections made here feel a bit too far-fetched or just for the sake of it to me. It is always tough to breathe life into non-living characters, also that aren't animals in WB's particular case, but here the outcome is desppite the high rating and the Oscar nom (lost to Munro) not a positive one. Also why was the conductor a note as well. Shouldn't he stand out and not be part of the piece? Oh well, by the way Blue Danube is of course as always a thing of beauty, but as it wasn't written for this movie here, I cannot add stars for that. Some great names united here with Jones, Maltese and Blanc, so the sub-par outcomes surprises me a bit. Not recommended. Watch something else instead.
Review of High Note
