Dime to Retire (1955) User Reviews

"A little traveling music, please."

[utgard14 · 7/10 · 1 February 2016]

Enjoyable Daffy & Porky short, directed by Robert McKimson. It takes place in a hotel with Daffy as the hotel owner/manager and Porky as a guest. Daffy charges only a dime to stay at his hotel. That bargain is, of course, too good to be true as crooked Daffy gets his money by sending various pests to harass his guests and then charge a fee to get rid of them. I've seen at least 2 other Daffy & Porky cartoons that took place in hotels where Porky wanted to sleep and Daffy was annoying him. Looney Tunes often reused and reworked ideas so that's really nothing surprising. This one's pretty funny, even if it's basically just one repeating gag. The animation is crisp and colorful. Nice music from Milt Franklyn. Typically excellent voice work from Mel Blanc. If you're a fan of Daffy and Porky, you'll no doubt like this one. It's not a classic but it is fun.

Most likely the basis for THE CAT IN THE HAT . . .

[oscaralbert · 8/10 · 19 November 2015]

. . . which came out a few years later, Warner Bros. Looney Tunes animated short DIME TO RETIRE deals with a series of escalating pests (rather than CAT's sequence of self-perpetuating stains). Unlike CAT, Daffy Duck has ulterior, mercenary motives as he bumps up a 10-cent room rental by $779 with his menagerie of guest room invaders. Daffy cycles from mouse to cat to dog to lion to elephant, and back to mouse before Porky blows his top (and Daffy's motel). As a veteran of dead, Odoriferously decomposing mice in both Montana and Michigan hotel rooms, the sight of a LIVE rodent munching celery seems benign enough to me. (It would be nice if every night could be spent at a rodent-free Five Star inn, but unexpected travel contingencies occasionally force one to settle for joints such as Daffy's anonymous lodgings in "Coopdeville," or at Saco Hot Springs.) Perhaps Porky feels more put out by his ad hoc roommates due to some religious affiliation from an episode yet to be released on DVD. If he's actually a Hindu or Kosher pig, it might be a whole different ball game.

Everyone knows that if you give a mouse a cookie . . .

[pixrox1 · 8/10 · 2 October 2020]

. . . he will demand a glass of milk, and DIME TO RETIRE discloses that if you're silly enough to offer such a small rodent a celery stalk, you'll soon be on the hook for an elephant. Living in several states where the idea of a rodent-free building is a preposterous fiction, this brief cartoon painfully called to mind one fateful interaction with a perfidious pest of this ilk. A few months after an infant's baptism, our family noticed that a little Cheeser had consumed ALL the fat (or tallow) from his ceremonial candle (which we had secured next to the household fax machine), leaving just the forlorn, barely burned wick. Two years later this tyke was diagnosed with an extremely rare wasting condition, which we've always blamed on the pestilent varmint. So even if our family were not Sixth Generation Anvil Sales People, DIME TO RETIRE would make us cringe!

A funny and imaginative cartoon from a greedy Daffy!

[bob the moo · 10 April 2004]

Porky Pig arrives in town while on a business trip to find that all the hotels are fully booked up. He is eager for a rest and thanks his lucky stars that he finds a hotel that only costs 10c per night! He wonders why it is so cheap when he gets good service from manager Daffy - but Daffy has an imaginative way to cover his costs.

I love Daffy Duck, but I greatly prefer him when he is crazy, in his early days - not only do I prefer his character but also the cartoons seemed to have more value placed upon them. Here, Daffy is greedy but he also has a crazy edge as he goes to increasingly weird lengths to place extra charges upon Porky. It surprised me that a later cartoon with Daffy in it would give him this character - but it was a pleasant surprise. The cartoon is very much an one-joke affair but it is an amusing joke. The fact that it has a slightly crazy vein of imaginative humour running through it really helps matters.

Porky is at his best when he is reacting to things around him as part of a good partnership and so, does well here. Daffy is great - he is greedy but he has still got his `woo-hoo' style about him which I love. He may not do that much but I still laughed - the various animals are just as good and deliver many of the jokes.

Overall this was a surprisingly little cartoon as I expected the worst. The plot makes for plenty of good laughs albeit with one joke repeated again and again and the characters delivery well in a short that harks back to the crazy, imaginative wit of Daffy's best.

A Daffy Duck episode which is surprisingly good!

[Mightyzebra · 6/10 · 5 July 2008]

"Dime to Retire" is one of quite a few Daffy Duck episodes where Daffy is being very cruel. Luckily in this, he is being cruel for money, he is being cruel in clever ways and he never actually hurts anybody himself (in other episodes, often Daffy is punching Porky and trying to kill Speedy Gonzales or something like that). There are also some quite clever gags in here, which is also rather unusual for this kind of episode. It is unlikely that you will not smile at least once while watching this. Luckily the theme of the episode is also good, the storyline would be much weaker without it.

Porky has been driving for quite some time and needs a place to stay for the night. Unfortunately, in the town he stops at, all of the hotels have no vacancy - except one. Porky is very surprised to find a hotel where he has to pay only ten cents per day. He is happy with his room provided by Daffy Duck (as the hotel manager), until a mouse starts chewing celery nearby. The trouble has only just started...

As bobthemoo also points out, there is a reference to the older, crazier Daffy Duck at the end of this, as he runs around shouting, "Woo-hoo!"

I recommend this to people who like the cruel Daffy Duck best and to people who like the modern Porky. Enjoy "Dime to Retire"! :-)

6 and a half out of ten.

Hotels and motels...where will they end?

[lee_eisenberg · 10/10 · 3 February 2016]

It's well known that Daffy is one greedy jerk. But never has the lisping mallard been greedier and more underhanded than he is in Robert McKimson's "Dime to Retire". When Porky stops at Daffy's hotel for the night, the stuttering pig soon finds out that the 10-cent fee was a ruse to extort more and more money over the course of the night! Yes, if movies and cartoons are any indication, we should avoid hotels (The Shining) and motels (Psycho). But obviously in this case, the unpleasant experience is a pleasure for us to watch. Whenever Daffy's in the picture, Porky just can't catch a break. Really fun one.

PS: Porky and Daffy previously had to share a hotel room in "Daffy Duck Slept Here" and later owned rival hotels in "Daffy's Inn Trouble".

Amusing one-joke cartoon

[TheLittleSongbird · 8/10 · 11 February 2010]

"Dime to Retire" was surprisingly good. Don't get me wrong, I love these Looney Tunes cartoons, there are just ones that I prefer over others. While very reliant on one joke really, the joke is amusing and is put to clever use. There is also imaginative humour that more than makes up for the rather episodic story structure. The animation is really very good with nice backgrounds and good character features, and the music is excellent. And while Porky is entertaining at reacting to things around him, it is Daffy who steals the show. I too prefer Daffy when he's manic, but he is really clever and funny here so I liked him here too. And as always, Mel Blanc does a stellar job with the voices.

Overall, not the best Looney Tunes cartoon, but very amusing and interesting. 8/10 Bethany Cox

There's a sure-fire U.S. Constitutional Amendment carefully crafted to deal with . . .

[cricket30 · 9/10 · 21 May 2021]

. . . all sorts of calamities, namely our beloved Second Amendment. If ever there were a story crying out for the hero to exercise his Second Amendment Rites, it is DIME TO RETIRE. This tale involves a weary salesman trapped by a nefarious motel proprietor in a fraudulent up-selling scheme. Though it turns out that the tired drummer has the where-with-all to raze the scammer's den of iniquity, it should not be necessary to resort to such explosive tactics. A BB gun could have dispatched the initial mousy pest. If somehow either the cat or the boxer had presented themselves, a .22 would have dispatched either or both of them. An elephant gun, of course, could have stopped the lion and the rifle's namesake pachyderm dead in their tracks. After you enjoy DIME TO RETIRE, please remember to support your local chapter of BANGS (Broke Americans Need Gun Stamps).