Horst in Translation (filmreviews@web.de) This is a Warner Bros. cartoon from almost 75 years ago. It is one of the more known cartoons that do not feature the regular guys like Daffy, Bugs etc. It runs for 9 minutes, which is 2 minutes longer as these cartoons from that time usually do. But that's also all the differences. Chuck Jones, Ted Pierce and Mel Blanc are in here as usual for Warner Bros. Maybe you could interpret the Dover reference as an indirect sign of American support for Britain during these dark days of World War II. In any case, the Dover boys never got more than this short movie I think and I can see why. I found none of the Dover Boys particularly memorable. If anybody somehow was not forgettable in here, then it was the antagonist, maybe also the woman. These two also shared the only funny moments for me, namely when she keeps screaming for help yet always interrupts that state in order to beat the crap out of the bad guy. That had something hilarious to it. That's all unfortunately. The three boys I found very forgettable. Not recommended.

MartinHafer I saw this film on the DVD entitled "Cartoon Crazys: And The Envelope Please". This is a rather poor compilation of supposedly award winning and nominated films. Poor because several of the films are very lame and are NOT award nominated, the prints are rather bad and parts of some of the cartoons are missing! One of the films that is missing portions is THE DOVER BOYS. Now here is the sad and sleazy part--the jerks who packaged this collection clipped the opening and closing credits off this and one other Looney Tune cartoon (PIGS IN A POLKA)--thus not giving anyone credit for having made this film. Plus, unlike the title to the collection suggests, THE DOVER BOYS was never award nominated--though it certainly is a very good film. If you do want to see this film, try buying "The Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume 2". It not only is the entire cartoon, but the print is light-years better, as the one in "Cartoon Crazies" is very orange and second-rate.If you compare this cartoon to later Looney Tunes films made during the post-WWII years, you might think that my score of 8 is a bit too high. However, compared to the average film the studio was making during the war years, it's definitely among their best and seems to merit an 8. Sadly, while not nominated, it was a lot better than Looney Tunes' PIGS IN A POLKA which was the nominee that the year. The parody of the old fashioned Rover Boys adventures is very funny and the ending is cute and unexpected.The "classic" Warner Brothers/Looney Tunes cartoons we all love and admire were almost exclusively made AFTER the war and the quality of the 1947-1955 cartoons are consistently great and a joy to watch. So, buying the Golden Collections seems like a great idea.

Lee Eisenberg To me, at least, "The Dover Boys at Pimento University or The Rivals of Roquefort Hall" seems like one of the most unusual Looney Tunes cartoons, but I still liked it. Portraying some college friends trying to rescue a woman from a cad/thief, the cartoon doesn't get quite as wacky as most cartoons produced by that group - I always liked them for how zany they were - but it ends on a good note. And any Chuck Jones-directed cartoon is a good one (especially with the whole tree sequence here).All in all, "The Dover Boys" gives one a sense of college life during WWII. Will we remember college positively or negatively? Only time will tell, but I'll sure remember this cartoon positively.

Markc65 I consider The Dover Boys to be Chuck Jones' first classic cartoon at Warner Bros. Before this cartoon Jones bored his audiences with weak imitations of cute Disney cartoons. Some of these earlier efforts had no humor in them at all, and the animation and timing were slow and plodding. He made a radical departure with The Dover Boys. Since it was a parody of gay nineties melodrama Jones has the characters strike very exaggerated poses. Because the poses were so strong they were easier for the eye to "read," and required less animation in between them. This also led to quicker timing of the action. Jones also invented a new way to animate speed. Up until this point in animation history speed was indicated by "drybrushing" streaks of paint following a fast moving character. Here, though, as the character moves from one extreme pose to the next he stretches like taffy (or "smears") for a few inbetween drawings. This created a more believable illusion of speed. (One has to watch these scenes frame by frame to appreciate it.) Besides all this inventiveness, the cartoon is incredible funny, too. Jones forsook Disney "realism" and has the characters move in humorous ways (Dora Standpipe never walks but glides across the floor). Mel Blank provides one of the funniest voices in his career for villain Dan Backslide. Jones got into some trouble for this experiment and it would be some time before he would use the lessons he learned from this cartoon again (mainly in the late forties). A real gem, highly recommended