Pluskylang Great Film overall

Platicsco Good story, Not enough for a whole film

Matialth Good concept, poorly executed.

Staci Frederick Blistering performances.

phantom_tollbooth Friz Freleng's 'Snafuperman' is one of the lesser Private Snafu shorts. A warning of the importance of studying your field manual, 'Snafuperman' makes it point rather clumsily. The story, in which Technical Fairy, First Class makes Snafu into a superhuman in order to help him see the error of his ways, is predictable and unfunny. Freleng's earlier Snafu short 'Rumours' had been bursting with ideas and laughs but here the director is lumbered with a rather boring topic and he struggles to make an entertaining short from it. Even at around three minutes long, 'Snafuperman' seems to drag and, unlike the best cartoons in the series, it feels like an instructional film first and entertainment second. Though they were knocked out more quickly than the usual Warner cartoons, the Snafu shorts largely maintained a surprisingly high standard. 'Snafuperman' is a reflection of the sort of quality you'd more reasonably expect from a less talent bunch of creative minds.

slymusic Uh-oh. Look out! The United States is doomed! It's "Snafuperman," one of the clandestine Warner Bros. cartoons starring the world's absolutely STUPIDEST soldier: Private Snafu. True, he's determined to defeat the Nazis, but if only he knew the distinction between friend and enemy! In my opinion, the funniest scene in "Snafuperman" is the very beginning, in which Snafu listens to the radio and noisily bangs on a series of pots, helmets, & crates while several other indignant officers are trying to study; one officer shouts, "How the hell do you expect a guy to study with all that racket going on?!" (I can't explain it, but there's something very humorous regarding even a mild cuss word in a Warner Bros. cartoon.) As a professional musician, how could I neglect Carl Stalling's wonderful musical accompaniment for "Snafuperman"? A swinging big band arrangement of "Little Brown Jug" can be heard over the radio as Snafu toys with his makeshift drumset. Shortly afterward, Beethoven's famous Piano Sonata in C Minor (Opus 13) accompanies Snafu stressing to his colleagues the importance of filling up those Nazis with lead. And as the aerial bombs are being loaded onto their respective planes, what could be a more appropriate accompaniment than "Off We Go Into the Wild Blue Yonder"?

Lee Eisenberg This time, Pvt. Snafu gets tired of reading manuals ("Don't conk the enemy over the head with a book! Pump 'im full of lead!"), and gets to be Superman. His immediate conviction of infallibility and omnipotence may be a metaphor for any superpower's wartime elephantiasis; he embodies the belligerent all-brawn-and-no-brain mentality that takes over. Certainly in "Snafuperman", Snafu learns the hard way that it pays to read the manuals. Of course, he has help from voice artist Mel Blanc and director Frank Tashlin. Worth seeing.As for that line "Messerschmitts! A whole mess of Messerschmitts!", that line also appeared in the Daffy Duck vehicle "Daffy - The Commando", in which Daffy ribs a Nazi Kommandant.

Robert Reynolds Here we find that paragon of soldierly virtue, Private Snafu, convinced that all that malarkey about "Enemy Recognition" and reading training manuals is a waste of time. He becomes Snafuperman (a parody of Superman) and discovers it isn't as simple as he thinks. Very good military training film done by the Warner Brothers animation department for the war effort. Well worth watching. Recommended.