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13 out of 13 people found the following review useful:
Like, The Coolest Three Little Pigs Anywhere, 21 April 2007
10/10
Author: ccthemovieman-1 from United States

Jazz, 1950s style, takes precedence in this cartoon of the "The Three Little Pigs" who are jazz musicians. They're good, too, on sax, drums, piano with a bass handy, if needed. The whole cartoon is told in song, with Stan Freberg doing his best to sound jazzy as he sings the story. It actually sounds more like very early rock 'n roll.

The story is basically a hip-dressed wolf who enters the club, hears the pigs and wants to join in with his trumpet. The pigs are nice guys and can't say "no" but when the wolf starts blowing his horn, well, it ain't' good. As Fregerg sings, "The three little pigs were really gassed; they never heard such a corny blast."

The pigs tell the wolf, "We've played in the West; we've played in the East, we've heard 'the most,' but you're 'the least!' They escort the wolf out. He winds up blowing the house of straw down!

This happens in several places as the pigs entertain elsewhere, each time the wolf coming in and getting thrown out for his horrible playing until the pigs finally build a place made out of bricks ("made in 1776" - each line is rhyme in this cartoon.)

It's this kind of dialog and singing (along with the dress-ware of the musicians) that makes this cartoon just a huge hoot to watch and hear. I loved it! It was different from anything else I've seen on these Looney Tunes collections. I felt like I was in a jazz club back in the '50s or at a Bill Haley rock 'n roll concert. This is one cartoon I will play over and over.

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6 out of 6 people found the following review useful:
"You gotta get hot to play real cool!", 16 February 2006
Author: slymusic from Tucson, AZ

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

"Three Little Bops" is one of my favorite Warner Bros. cartoons, and not just because I am a jazz musician. This cartoon, under the direction of Friz Freleng, is a delightfully funny jazz adaptation of the Three Little Pigs story. The three pigs play some hard-driving swing music that cannot be resisted by anyone wishing to dance, but the trumpet-blowing Big Bad Wolf repeatedly tries to sit in uninvited, and he proves he can't play worth beans. After getting kicked out of the first two jazz clubs (made respectively of straw and sticks), the wolf succeeds in blowing them down with his trumpet. Since he cannot blow down the third club (made of bricks), he tries to blow it up with a TNT keg, and he ends up blowing himself up instead. While burning inside a cooking pot in Hades, he is finally able to play the trumpet satisfactorily!

So many things about this cartoon are funny: the musical narration throughout, as well as the rhythmic dialogue of the pigs and the wolf (all vocal characterizations well-performed by Stan Freberg); the wolf dancing, turning pages in the music, and playing the trumpet badly (a challenge for the great jazzman Shorty Rogers); the piano-playing pig forming a square to indicate the quality of the wolf's trumpet playing; the numerous sound effects created by different instruments; the crowd of people all in sync on the dance floor; the wolf in a marching band uniform pounding a bass drum and in a woman's coat playing the Charleston dance on the ukulele; and the wolf finally playing a fine jazz trumpet solo while boiling in a pot in Hades.

Friz Freleng was a music lover, hence he incorporated music as a vital component in his cartoons. "Three Little Bops" is a definite musical gem in the Warner Bros. cartoon library, and I must highly recommend this film for all fans of cartoons and music.

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5 out of 5 people found the following review useful:
A Fully Deserving Cult Favorite, 10 June 2008
10/10
Author: JohnHowardReid

Why this absolutely brilliant 1957 "Looney Tunes" entry was not nominated for an Academy Award, I'll never know. In a 1992 television viewers' poll, it was deservedly voted one of the best twenty cartoons in the whole Warner Brothers' repertoire.

For once, the UPA cartoon style isn't employed by the Warner artists simply because it's flavor of the month, but because it's highly suited to the subject matter. The backgrounds and the character animation all perfectly compliment the up-beat vocal.

No matter how many times you watch and listen to "The Three Little Bops", repeated viewing does little to lessen the impact of its cleverly off-beat visual and verbal humor.

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7 out of 9 people found the following review useful:
Excellent Riff on the story of the Three Little Pigs, 4 November 2000
10/10
Author: Robert Reynolds (minniemato@hotmail.com) from Tucson AZ

This is a jazzy little cartoon, taking the Three Little Pigs and making them a Jazz combo, consisting of a guitar, drums and piano. The Big Bad Wolf wants to join in on a jam session. He's really bad and a square, so the Pigs tell him to scram. The cartoon focuses on his attempts to join in. The music is great, the narration is sung (by Stan Freberg) and the ending is excellent. The crowd goes wild and the land saw much rejoicing! They just don't make 'em like this anymore! Great cartoon and more than worth your time. Highly Recommended.

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4 out of 4 people found the following review useful:
it's fun to pig out on this cartoon, 28 November 2006
10/10
Author: Lee Eisenberg (eisenberg.lee@gmail.com) from Portland, Oregon, USA

Through many of the Looney Tunes cartoons, I've derived that the creators probably had a way with jazz, and it plays out in "Three Little Bops", as a trio of jazz-playing pigs perform in clubs, but a square wolf keeps interrupting and blowing the clubs down. But then, they find a place built out of bricks.

Not only is this a jazz-centric cartoon, but I notice that the narration sounds like "Rock Around the Clock". But that shouldn't be any surprise; after all, rock 'n' roll was pretty much based in jazz and blues. All in all, this is a very fine cartoon. I can say with certainty that Stan Freberg was as great a voice artist as Mel Blanc was.

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2 out of 2 people found the following review useful:
a toe-tapping good time, 31 October 2005
8/10
Author: movieman_kev from United States

A variation on the Three Little Pigs fable set to toe tapping jazz swinging music. Has the pigs playing different clubs which the Wolf blows down when no one likes his trumpet playing and call him a square. This was an amusing short and the music was good so I enjoyed it. Not the best of the music-centric Looney Tunes shorts, but it's still a fun time to be had be all. This animated short can be seen on Disc 4 of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume 2. It features a commentary by Jerry beck, as well as an optional music only track, and a vocals only track.

My Grade: B

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3 out of 4 people found the following review useful:
Musicians cult classic., 22 January 2003
Author: meg940 from Sydney, Australia



Every muso you speak to knows this cartoon. When I was in year 10 my school music teacher showed us this video. I'm now a high school music teacher myself and I want to share it with my students too. Unfortunately my old teacher has lost it and I can't find a copy of it anywhere. I've described it to my students and they have named their jazz band "House of Bricks". I may sound slightly obsessed but to me watching this cartoon was a defining moment in my musical career.

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1 out of 1 people found the following review useful:
Doesn't matter where you play in town, wolf will try to blow your club down., 21 July 2011
10/10
Author: tyler-and-jack from Edinburgh.

Not quite as manic as some other Loony Tunes cartoons that you could think of, and without the voice of Mel Blanc, that doesn't mean that this is a lesser cartoon. In fact, it stands as one of the very best and it's certainly the best one that doesn't feature any of the A-list stars (Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Road Runner, etc).

The story is simple: a jazz-infused, cool riff on the Three Little Pigs tale. The pigs play in a band and spend every night pleasing audiences with their hip and groovy tunes. When the big bad wolf walks into the club and tries to join in it soon becomes clear that he can't, he's just not cool enough to play well. Once kicked out of the venue, big bad wolf decides to huff and puff the place down. The first club is made of straw, the second made of sticks and I'm sure you can guess what the third club is made of.

Constructed in the form of a 7-minute (approx) song, Three Little Bops provides as much fun from the narrator's lyrics as it does from the on screen antics of wolf and the pigs. The animation is as good as you'd expect and this remains one of my favourite ever cartoons, a little slice of animated perfection.

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I saw three entertaining versions of Three Little Bops on YouTube, 26 May 2009
Author: tavm from Baton Rouge, La.

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

On YouTube, I got to see three versions of this unique Warner Bros. Looney Tunes cartoon. One was the original with the voices of Stan Freberg and the music of Shorty Rogers. That one is pure classic. Another one had an Italian-dubbed soundtrack that was another nice twist on the cartoon. And then there was one I saw linked from the Misce-Looney-ous blog. That one had a live version of the music and the other voices as performed at the Blackstump Festival at Australia in 1993 by the Belvedere Blues Band. That was fine too except for the slightly changed ending when it's mentioned that the wolf went to the pearly gates when he's still seen playing in "the other place" and one of the pigs says, "You've got to be SAVED to play it cool" instead of saying HOT. While this cartoon was not hilarious, there was one line that I was highly amused by when, after Freberg mentions Liberace, one of those pigs says, "I wish my brother George was here." On that note, I highly recommend all three versions of Three Little Bops that are uploaded on YouTube still as I'm writing this... Original version:**********, Italian-dubbed version: **********, Belvedere Blues version: *********.

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1 out of 2 people found the following review useful:
Slightly flawed but still a personal favourite, 1 October 2008
9/10
Author: (andrew-goulding1@hotmail.co.uk) from Lincoln, England

Friz Freleng's 'The Three Little Bops' is a longtime favourite of mine. From the first time I saw it at a very early age, I was always on the lookout for a chance to see it again. While I was growing up during the 80s and 90s, Warner Bros. cartoons were frequently on TV and every so often this one came around. I was absolutely delighted when it finally became available for me to own on the essential Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume 2. A jazz parody of Disney's famous 'Three Little Pigs' cartoon, 'The Three Little Bops' is entirely set to music with a great vocal by the underrated Stan Freberg (who finally gets screen credit in this cartoon). It tells the story of the Big Bad Wolf's unsuccessful attempts to be accepted into the Three Little Pigs nightclub act and each time he is rejected, he blows the nightclub down! The visuals are beautifully stylised, fitting perfectly with the modern theme of the cartoon, and Warren Foster's lyrics are often priceless ("Dew Drop Inn did drop down"!). It's not quite a perfect cartoon, since there are a couple of slightly mistimed moments and the section in which the Wolf adopts a series of disguises slows things down and unnecessarily breaks from the musical narration for a conspicuously long time. Nevertheless, if asked to list my favourite cartoons, 'The Three Little Bops' would always be one of the first to pop into my head. It's a toe-tapping delight of which I never tire.

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