Tour De Farce (1967) User Reviews

Typical Inspector short, with gags out of a Coyote/Roadrunner cartoon

[llltdesq · 7/10 · 30 July 2014]

This is an Inspector short from DePatie-Freleng. There will be spoilers ahead:

The Inspector is taking Mack La Truck to Devil's Island. In typical fashion, our "hero" gets himself left on a deserted island with a criminal who can snap him like a twig.

The Inspector winds up in a struggle for supremacy and control. The gags are largely straight out of an old Wile E. Coyote/Roadrunner short, what with falling boulders, elastic bands on tree trunks and traps which don't exactly work out as The Inspector intends.

Even the way La Truck is captured has him doing a poor man's Coyote, though the closing gag is good. This short has its moments, though not enough of them in my view.

This short is on the second of two DVDs of Inspector shorts which between them hold all 34 of the shorts in the series. The DVDs are worth getting.

On devil's island

[TheLittleSongbird · 7/10 · 15 August 2019]

Not all the thirty four cartoons running from 1965 to 1969 in the second largest DePatie-Freleng theatrical series The Inspector are great. There are some average or less ones, but most are above average to very good. So The Inspector series is not an even one, but generally it is worth watching and one of DePatie-Freleng Enterprises' better theatrical series. It helps that the titular character himself is a good and amusing one, with enough personality to be worthy of his own series.

'Tour De Farce' is somewhere in the high middle, if ranking the cartoons in the series. It may not be one of the funniest or most imaginative The Inspector cartoons, but it is above average, pretty solid actually, and entertaining at least. Good but falls short of being great. Deux Deux and the chemistry between him and The Inspector are missed, but the opponent Mack La Truck is at least a worthy one and pretty different. A nice mix of amusing and formidable, a pretty good mix too.

It is very standard and pretty predictable in terms of story and some of the gags agreed are somewhat derivative of, or at least fairly heavily inspired by, Roadrunner/Wile E. Coyote so there is not quite enough of its own spin here.

Hardly a shortage of gags though and despite not being hilarious and being fairly familiar territory they are well timed and are humorous. The ending is a high point. he Inspector does carry the cartoon, he is difficult to dislike, is a strong enough personality in his own right and is one with good comic timing even in most lesser outings. Mack La Truck as said is a worthy opponent and their well contrasted chemistry also helps carry the cartoon.

Animation is fine and unmistakably distinctive DePatie-Freleng in style. Simple but always attractive, with nice attention to detail and especially striking were the rich colours. Liked the jauntiness and jazzy slinkiness of the music, which didn't sound too cheap or repetitive.

Overall, solid but not great. 7/10

Knowing that this picture is a product of . . .

[oscaralbert · 6/10 · 4 September 2023]

. . . The Great Dispersion, when Warner Brothers dispatched its team of clairvoyant seers to all of its historic rival animation studios to both exact revenge for past wrongs and to spread the philosophy of predictive cartooning, many consumers of this sort of fare have asked me to what extent this dispersion is responsible for TOUR OF FARCE, as the title here translates into American. I'd have to say that such sway is subtle, at best. Ask yourself, How many bicycles appear on-screen during this TOUR? However, the thuggish ruffian making life miserable for The Inspector certainly seems predictive of how Lone Star cheat Lance A. Boyle continually intimidated honest TOUR participants and potential whistle-blowers as he manipulated an easy-to-corrupt event to steal the glory from actual athletes an impossible seven times.