King-Size Canary

Tex Avery, IMHO, is probably hands-down the best at his craft. Current stuff -- just that, stuff. The closest I've seen of recent work would have to be the four Roger Rabbit/Baby Herman cartoons (including the short that opened the film, "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?").

This simple premise -- starving cat & undersized intended snack -- is complicated by a miraculous growth fertilizer and spirals rapidly out of control to a completely ridiculous conclusion.

I was lucky enough to own the box-set of laserdiscs which included every cartoon Tex Avery made for MGM, and I would have paid three times what I did for it. Although this particular cartoon wasn't my favorite (I might have to lean toward one of the two versions of "Northwest Hounded Police" in which double-takes and eyeball gags are elevated to an art form), it was certainly in the upper levels. Another high-ranking short: "Bad Luck Blackie", in which a black cat simply struts in front of a surprisingly vicious bulldog to bring him instant -- and potentially lethal -- bad luck.

Try to see these shorts unedited, not the hacked 'politically correct' versions being shown on some cable cartoon shows. Absolutely the best animation for sheer hilarity that has ever been committed to celluloid.

Tex Avery did a lot of classic cartoons and this is often considered the best of them; it appears frequently on the list of best cartoons of all times. I can't argue with that assertion. Its individual gags, from the tiny bird announcing "I've been sick!" to the mouse who is reading THE LOST SQUEAKEND are numerous, well executed and very funny.

And yet it suffers, I think from a weak ending. Avery was far more interested in the gags than the structure of his cartoons, and given their set length, he'd end them pretty abruptly That happens here, and its one of his few, albeit typical flaws.

An alley cat is starving and does all he can to find food. Eventually, he breaks into a house and ransacks the contents of the kitchen. He finds a can of cat food, but upon opening it, he finds a mouse who talks him into letting him go, and tells him to eat the canary in the next room. Well, now comes the kicker. The cat finds a bottle of some growth substance. He pours it down the throat of the canary and the thing becomes enormous. Now the cat must drink the stuff and get bigger, followed by a dog, and finally the mouse. You get the point. I won't talk about the ending, but it's pretty much what you would expect from what has happened. We never really question the fact that such a substance exists. Tex Avery handles the expressions and the craziness just fine.

While I do not personally think this is Avery's best cartoon (that honor goes to The Legend of Rockabye Point) and this one is also not among my personal favorites, this is the ultimate in Tex Avery cartoons. Everything Avery strived to do is here-he loved taking a quasi-normal situation, tossing in a random, improbable element or three and then piling sight gag after sight gag, each one more outlandish than the ones before. The jokes are all sight gags. What dialogue there is is generally there as necessary for set-up and only one or two lines are even mildly funny. Just sight gags, as far as the eye can see, fast enough to register, but so fast that you almost don't have time to breathe because you're laughing so hard. This one makes you want to do things like hang spoons from your nose! Wildly silly and unforgettable, truly a masterpiece. This is a great cartoon! It worked 55 years ago and it works today. You have to see this one. Most highly recommended.

Of Tex Avery's three masterpieces, "King-Size Canary" is the best of the lot. (In case you're wondering, the other two are "Who Killed Who?" and "Red Hot Riding Hood," both 1943.) This has to be seen to be believed, let alone appreciated. I once tried to describe it to a friend, one who admitted affection for Chuck Jones' Bugs/Daffy/Elmer hunting trilogy from Warner Bros., and failed miserably to do it justice. The insanity builds from a merely amusing opening to a mind-boggling yet inevitable finale, an image that will stay with you for some time after the fade-out.