Should have been called 'The Laughing Weasel'. Probably the funniest thing about this early Tex Avery short, and the best reason for seeing it today, is to hear Avery's ridiculous, almost continuous laughter as Willy Weasel, in this, his first voice role. It's a goofy, cheerful, infectious and idiotic laughter which immediately indicates that this villain is going to be pretty inept. I mean, his first words, from memory, are "Yuck, yuck, yuck - I'm the villain of this picture folks!"

This is an early enough Merrie Melodies short that you can still see the clear influence of the more rounded, cute Disney look - before Warner stamped their own more angular trademark on their cartoons, both in terms of appearance and humour. Still, even if the visuals look rather mid 30's, the writing is already squeezing itself out of the cutesy stereotype - a prelude to the more manic material which was to come shortly.

Mother hen gets her children in when a thunderstorm looms, but one of them catches a cold. She rushes off to find 'Dr Quack' (who, unsurprisingly turns out to be a duck, though he plays little part in the film). Meanwhile Willy eventually manages to get inside the house by disguising himself as the not-yet-arrived doctor.

I can watch this and enjoy it, and it nearly gets 2.5, but then I'd have to go and give 3.0 to 'Falling Hare' and who knows what else, so I'm taking these as they hit me and trying to be consistent.

Nowhere near a great WB cartoon, but fair enough, and equally far from being a waste of time. Worth it if only for Tex's laugh.