The Night Watchman is definitely notable and worth the watch for it being Chuck Jones' debut. It is not bad, far from it, but is not one of Jones' best by a long shot. There is definitely the sense that Jones was still finding his own feet. The animation is colourful and vivid. The music is wonderfully jazzy and characterful. The floor show is very exciting, with catchy music and very nicely choreographed. The funniest moment is the scene where you see the way the mice eat, very inventive and very funny. And the voice acting is great. The Night Watchman does suffer generally though from a lack of energy, which makes the rather dully thin story even more lacking. The ending is also rather tacked on as already mentioned, and the funny moments come only in spades rather than the laugh-a-minute quality that Jones was wholly capable of. While there definitely some cute moments, some parts of the cartoon come across as too cutesy that it's almost rather cloying, and the characters while also sweet are not very compelling enough to carry the story. In conclusion, The Night Watchman is interesting. But it is also a disappointment. Luckily after a shaky but worthwhile enough start with this Chuck Jones went on to much better things, the best of his work are masterpieces or close to that. 5/10 Bethany Cox

"The Night Watchman" is a very good Warner Bros. cartoon directed by Chuck Jones. A friendly little cat is hired by his ailing dad as the night watchman guarding the abundant kitchen against a treacherous gang of mice.Since I am a jazz musician, my absolute favorite sequence from this short is the floor show, in which a trio of mice sing a swinging version of "In the Shade of the Apple Tree", accompanied by a big band of mice playing kitchen utensils as instruments.One final point: As much as I like "The Night Watchman", I am so glad I did not see it as a kid, because I would have identified with the poor little cat and wept with him after he took all that physical abuse from the mice.

It's hard to believe that Chuck Jones, known for irreverent masterpieces like "Duck Amuck" and "What's Opera, Doc?", started out with something as simple as "The Night Watchman". It portrays a kitten having to take over his ill father's job as a security guard (it's not identified where this cartoon takes place), only to have a bevy of tough mice bully him and chow down on all the food. Until the kitten's guardian angel enters the fray.We should be able to forgive Chuck if this one seems weak compared to his most famous work; after all, everyone had to start somewhere. So if nothing else, this one's worth watching as a historical reference.

This is a very cute cartoon, but not an especially interesting short on its own merits. The chief point of interest here is as the very first cartoon which Chuck Jones directed. As I will mention some details, there will be mild spoilers: The basic premise of this short is that the regular night watchman, a full-grown cat, is sick and can't make his rounds and so the task falls to his young son. To say that the mice are less than concerned about the new night watchman would be an understatement. They're bigger, meaner and tougher than the little cat and bully him mercilessly.This turn of events means that they have pretty much got free run of the kitchen for most of the short. There are a few cute food-related sight gags, but the short is a bit flatter and less energetic than you would expect, though, to be fair, if you look at it without comparing it to later work by Jones, it comes off looking a good deal better.The ending is all rather predictable, though fun to watch for the most part. This isn't a bad short, it just pales in comparison to the work which would come later, though it does make clear that Jones was interested in the cute and sentimental from the beginning. This was probably the genesis of the Sniffles shorts done a bit later.This short is available on the Looney Tunes Golden Collection, Volume 4 and is worth a look. The Collection, as with the previous three volumes, is most highly recommended.