CrawlerChunky
In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.
Aneesa Wardle
The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.
Scarlet
The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.
Michael_Elliott
Night Watchman, The (1938)*** (out of 4) A cat is too sick to go to work as a night watchman so he hands over his cap and flashlight to his young son. Once the son is on the scene a gang of mice start to take over so the kitten must find a way to build up some courage. This is a pleasant early short from Jones (his first in fact) who shows a real flare for the material here. The animation really stands out with the wonderful and vivid colors. Everything from the young cat's uniform to various food products really jump off the screen. Another major plus is the story, which is certainly cute and rewarding. There are many good scenes in the movie but my favorite has to be the sequence where the mice start to take over by eating everything in the house. The way the mice eat provide many laughs.
Neil Doyle
This is a cute but undistinguished Chuck Jones cartoon (his first) and it falls far short of being truly funny. Another drawback is that the kitten is no match for Figaro in Disney's "Pinocchio," lacking the charm and humor of that kitten in the way it's animated.The whole situation is predictable from the start. The kitten's father is ill, so he has to hand over the job of night watchman to the kitty. Naturally, the mice take full advantage of the situation, which gets completely out of hand until the kitten's guardian angel (halo and all) gives him a serious pep talk which turns the kitten into a tiger who puts an end to all the boorish behavior of the mice.Unpretentious, but not a lot of fun. The style is too crude for the film to have the cuddly charm it aims for. In other words, it's a wobbly start for Chuck Jones.
phantom_tollbooth
'The Night Watchman' was the debut directional effort by that great master of animation, Chuck Jones. Typical of Jones's serviceable but rather dull Disney pastiches that characterised his early work, 'The Night Watchman' is an unbearably gooey little offering with a constant lack of energy that is sorely required to bolster the wafer thin plot. A young cat (a clear prototype for Jones's cloying early character Sniffles) takes over the post of night watchman when his father is too ill to carry out the job. Immediately, he falls foul of some tough guy rats who push him around and take advantage of the absence of any real threat to gorge themselves with food and have a big night out in the kitchen. Of course, the cat finally turns the tables when his conscience buoys him up for a big final showdown. Betraying none of the talent he would become famous for (and, let's be fair, this was his first film), Jones lays out the story in a straightforward, no-frills manner. The characters are all severely lacking in charisma, particularly the so-wet-you-almost-don't-feel-sorry-for-him cat, the animation is lumbering and predictable, the musical number is flat and the story doesn't build naturally, instead resorting to a tacked on and completely unsatisfying finale in which the cat does a too-sudden about face and metes out a workmanlike beating to each individual rat, a production line revenge that is less than thrilling to watch. Of course, Warner Bros. was still finding its feet as an animation studio and 'The Night Watchman' is not significantly worse than many of the lesser cartoons of the time but, other than its historical importance as Jones's debut, there's really nothing here that I'd recommend to the casual cartoon fan.
Lee Eisenberg
It's hard to believe that Chuck Jones, known for irreverent masterpieces like "Duck Amuck" and "What's Opera, Doc?", started out with something as simple as "The Night Watchman". It portrays a kitten having to take over his ill father's job as a security guard (it's not identified where this cartoon takes place), only to have a bevy of tough mice bully him and chow down on all the food. Until the kitten's guardian angel enters the fray.We should be able to forgive Chuck if this one seems weak compared to his most famous work; after all, everyone had to start somewhere. So if nothing else, this one's worth watching as a historical reference.
