GrimPrecise I'll tell you why so serious

Baseshment I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

Logan By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Cheryl A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

TheLittleSongbird Not only that, but in my opinion also one of the greatest cartoons of all time. The animation is wonderful, so colourful and vibrant in the background art and colours and in terms of character designs The Dover Boys at Pimento University also excels with that for Dan Backslide standing out.The music has always been a delight in the Merrie Melodie cartoons, and The Dover Boys at Pimento University is no exception. It sparkles with energy, and I loved the use of William Tell. The story is engaging, fast-paced and really works as a spoof of the Rover Boys, and the characters, Dan Backslide especially, are some of Merrie Melodies' most unique and memorable.Where The Dover Boys at Pimento University really shines is in the writing. The dialogue is witty with a hint of subtlety and absolutely hilarious right from the narrator's sardonic yet dynamic narration to Dan Backslide's scheming and "Confound those ponies, they drive me to drink". Also wonderful are the sight gags, not just Dan Backslide's very unique way at kidnapping Dainty Dora but also the fact that Dainty Dora is screaming for help while also giving Dan Backslide a hard time.Voice work is simply terrific. Mel Blanc's Dan Backslide is hardly what I call subtle, this said that doesn't stop me from thinking this was one of his best vocal performances though Blanc was an outstanding and very consistent voice actor. John McLeish's vocals as the narrator is wittily delivered while never feeling overdone. Ted Pierce was another fine voice actor, and he is as solid as ever.All in all, truly outstanding and one of the best. 10/10 Bethany Cox

Michael_Elliott Dover Boys at Pimento University or The Rivals of Roquefort Hall, The (1942) ** (out of 4) At one time Chuck Jones said Warner almost fired him because of this cartoon and it's very easy to see why. This here is without question one of the strangest shorts I've seen from the studio. Three brothers, Larry, Tom and Dick, are taking their fiancé out when a rival kidnaps her. I'm really not sure what to say about this film but I guess the best way to put it is that this is either a great masterpiece of originality or one of the worst films ever made. I'll let you decide but I thought the film was pretty bad but at the same time I couldn't help but admire how different it was. The characters are strange, the color scheme is strange and pretty much everything else is strange including the humor. I'm really not sure what this thing is trying to do or if it's trying to spoof something but this here is one you'll have to see for yourself.

phantom_tollbooth Chuck Jones's 'The Dover Boys' is out and out one of the funniest cartoons ever made. From a cracking and atypical script by Tedd Pierce which satirises the melodramatic boy's books of the early 20th century, Jones seizes the opportunity to create something different. Much to the studio's dismay, Jones opted to experiment with a stylised and minimal design. The characters look very different from your average Warner Bros. characters and they snap from pose to pose extremely quickly, making for an exceedingly pacey film. The Dover Boys are three students from Pimento university who pride themselves on being extremely wholesome despite sharing a fiancé between the three of them. This fiancé, Dora, is one of the most remarkable things in the whole short. Her first appearance, in which she imitates a cuckoo clock and then charges down the stairs without even moving her legs, epitomises the quirky style of 'The Dover Boys' and is an early indication of just how wonderfully well this unusual approach works. She is also a great example of a subversion of the damsel in distress stereotype, assuming that role while clearly indicating she can take care of herself better than any man ever could.The cartoon, however, really belongs to the villain, the green-faced Dan Backslide. Beautifully designed and animated, he gets all the best lines, many of which are made all the funnier by one of Mel Blanc's finest ever voice characterizations. Throw in a bizarre and disturbingly arbitrary running gag, a great narration by John McLeish and a handful of hilarious gags and peculiar animation techniques and you have one of the classic shorts in animation history. 'The Dover Boys' is a lesser discussed cartoon in comparison to the more well known shorts in the Chuck Jones canon ('One Froggy Evening', 'What's Opera Doc', 'Duck Amuck' etc.) but for those who have seen it, it remains an unforgettable and extraordinarily important film that has a far reaching influence, not least on those wonderful cartoons made by UPA.

Markc65 I consider The Dover Boys to be Chuck Jones' first classic cartoon at Warner Bros. Before this cartoon Jones bored his audiences with weak imitations of cute Disney cartoons. Some of these earlier efforts had no humor in them at all, and the animation and timing were slow and plodding. He made a radical departure with The Dover Boys. Since it was a parody of gay nineties melodrama Jones has the characters strike very exaggerated poses. Because the poses were so strong they were easier for the eye to "read," and required less animation in between them. This also led to quicker timing of the action. Jones also invented a new way to animate speed. Up until this point in animation history speed was indicated by "drybrushing" streaks of paint following a fast moving character. Here, though, as the character moves from one extreme pose to the next he stretches like taffy (or "smears") for a few inbetween drawings. This created a more believable illusion of speed. (One has to watch these scenes frame by frame to appreciate it.) Besides all this inventiveness, the cartoon is incredible funny, too. Jones forsook Disney "realism" and has the characters move in humorous ways (Dora Standpipe never walks but glides across the floor). Mel Blank provides one of the funniest voices in his career for villain Dan Backslide. Jones got into some trouble for this experiment and it would be some time before he would use the lessons he learned from this cartoon again (mainly in the late forties). A real gem, highly recommended