User Reviews

Who knew Baby Huey was Irish? I had no idea until I saw this one and heard an uncredited Jackson Beck voice Huey's father (called "Gilbert" in the comic books) with an accent.

We also get a break from the neighborhood kids hating Huey until he saves them from a wolf in this story. I credit the influence of Harvey comics. Harvey was about three years into their contract with Famous Studios to publish comic books based on the movie cartoons. This meant many more Baby Huey comic book stories than cartoons, and so the stories had a larger cast of characters.

The resulting cartoon is a decent idea -- Huey wants to go fishing with his father, who reluctantly takes him along -- with a variable assortment of gags. It's undistinguished but competent fare, typical for most of Famous Studios' output for this period

This is going to be similarly worded to my previous Baby Huey reviews, because the strengths and flaws are pretty much identical in all.

Generally am not a fan of the character of Baby Huey, a rather one-joke character and especially in his later Famous Studios cartoons annoying. When it comes to Famous Studios' cartoons, there is a general preference for the Popeye, Casper and even Herman and Katnip cartoons. Although they all in all fairness had not so great cartoons in their later years, which was due to an overall decline in quality for Famous Studios due to what seemed like tighter deadlines and lower budgets.

'Huey's Ducky Daddy' is different from the previous cartoons in that there is no fox and no cute duckling characters that are annoyed by Baby Huey's antics. Instead, his father is introduced and he ends up being the cartoon's most rootable character and while his material is not particularly funny he amuses more than his son does.

Best thing about it is Winston Sharples' music score, which is outstanding. even in mediocre or worse cartoons Sharples' music was never among the flaws (if anything always one of the strengths or the best asset). Also love the lusciousness of the orchestration here and how characterful, haunting and whimsical the music was without going overboard in either, even better was how well it fitted in the cartoon and how it merged with the action.

Voice work of Sid Raymond, Mae Questel (though she has very little to do) and especially Jackson Beck (voicing with blustering gusto as Huey's father) is good, and there are some vibrant colours and nicely detailed backgrounds.

Part of the reason why 'Huey's Ducky Daddy', and his cartoons in general, don't do much for me mostly is Baby Huey himself, a one-joke character that at this point stretched him well thin by now. There is less of the big heart and good intentions that made him tolerable in his debut cartoon 'Quack a Doodle Do' and even more of the stupidity and dim-wittedness, he is annoying here and it was very difficult not to feel sorry for his father.

Dialogue is simplistic and forgettable at best, and the story is very predictable and takes a good while to get going. The gags are too tired, some of it mean-spirited and heavy too, for the relationship to register strongly (the cartoon really does strain, or shall we say fish, for laughs), and much of the drawing lacks finesse and looks scrappy.

All in all, mediocre at best. Like a lot of Famous Studios' stuff very much but have yet to be impressed by a Baby Huey cartoon. 4/10 Bethany Cox