Am giving 'Little Red School Mouse' a low rating and negative review with a heavy heart. Being somebody that loves animation and likes to loves a lot of the Noveltoons cartoons (the best decade being easily the 40s). Have known for a long time that Famous Studios were capable of good work and they showed that numerous times, but there were average or less cartoons of theirs overall and in the Noveltoons series and the worst of them were quite poor.
One of those quite poor cartoons of theirs is 1949's 'Little Red School Mouse'. Actually sort of knew and dreaded from reading the uninspired and routine-sounding synopsis that the cartoon would be scraping average level at best, but there was the hope that somehow it would make the premise work and be a lot more interesting than it sounded. Sadly 'Little Red School Mouse' was as uninspired (and that is being generous) as it sounded on paper and had nowhere near enough to it to scrape average.
There are a few good things. The best thing about it is the characterful and lush music, though that aspect was over-used. The main song is very catchy. There are some nice colours in the animation.
'Little Red School Mouse' did pick up a little towards the end though not exceptionally.
However, everything else does not work. Was actually disappointed in the animation this time round, which really surprised me as Famous Studios were usually much better animated than this. Mostly it did lack fluidity in transitions and character designs, which were quite ugly here, and the colours on the most part were gaudy and lacked variety. While liking the music judging it on its own, generally the cartoon felt too noisy and will agree with those that did find the sound headache inducing later.
Nothing is funny here, or even remotely amusing, what little humour there was was tired, and the cutesiness was overkill. The story is near-non-existent and the conflict is predictable and badly lacks tension on the whole. It picks up a little towards the end but not by much and it was only because the early portions of the cartoon were so dull. None of the mice characters are interesting or appealing and that is including the title character, the only halfway decent character here is the cat and he was wasted (his type of character has been done before numerous times in Famous Studios before and since and animation in general and with much more inspiration elsewhere).
In summary, weak. 3/10