HOUSE HUNTING MICE (1947)
Article 5281 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 10-24-2016
Directed by Chuck Jones
Featuring the voices of Mel Blanc and Stan Freberg
Country: USA
What it is: Warner Brothers cartoon

Hubie and Bertie check out a fully automated house, but run afoul of the building’s automatic sweeper.

Here’s another cartoon that doesn’t rely solely on anthropomorphic animals for its fantastic content. Which is not to say it doesn’t have them; Hubie and Bertie are anthropomorphic mice with characters that could be described as being like Abbott and Costello filtered through the Bowery Boys. But on top of that, we have the fully-automated house, full of robots and gadgets that push it into the realm of science fiction. Warner Brothers used the automated house a few times in its cartoons, but I like some of the clever variations here, particularly the automatic phonograph. Usually Hubie and Bertie cartoons had them terrorizing a neurotic cat named Claude; here, they get there comeuppance at the hand of a robot sweeper who mistakes them for garbage. I liked this one.