Garden Gopher

In another short Avery completed before taking a self-imposed hiatus from the M-G-M cartoon department, "Garden Gopher" is a very fast-moving and very funny cartoon! Spike is burying a bone in his yard when the bone keeps popping up from the ground, courtesy of an unappreciative gopher. Soon a battle of wits ensues as Spike attempts to get rid of the gopher with cigar smoke, gun powder, a rifle, a cannon, hot peppers and finally dressing up as a female gopher! The best gag in the cartoon is now excised from most existing prints of "Garden Gopher" - Spike fills the gopher's hole with blasting powder, not knowing the gopher has spilled grease under his feet. As Spike attempts to flee from the ensuing explosion, the powder explodes and the aftermath leaves Spike doing a un-PC slow shuffle akin to a tar baby. As with "Droopy's Good Deed", one might want to seek out a print from a private collector to see the whole cartoon.

Spike the Bulldog tries to bury a bone in the yard but he's stopped by a garden gopher. He tries various schemes to get the gopher with no success. This is a cartoon short by Tex Avery. Many of these gags are familiar although I doubt that I've seen this cartoon before. They are very standard and very good.

This is an intensely visual and quite hilarious cartoon directed by Tex Avery starring a silent Spike waging war on a marauding gopher laying waste to a vegetable garden. Spike, of course, doesn't stand a chance in this fight. Typical Tex Avery sight gag rapid-fire delivery that works marvelously well. Well worth seeking out. Most recommended.

Spike the Bulldog tries to bury a bone, but a pesky gopher throws it back at him, starting a hilarious battle of wits. Many prints of this film today are edited. In the original version, Spike pours gun powder around the gopher's hole, but the gopher comes out and pours grease where he's standing. Spike lights the fuse and runs like mad, not realizing that he's not going anywhere and he gets caught in the explosion. After the smoke clears, we see Spike as a black stereotype doing a slow shuffle while the sound track plays "Old Black Joe" or something like that.

Love animation, it was a big part of my life as a child, particularly Disney, Looney Tunes and Tom and Jerry, and still love it whether it's film, television or cartoons.

Also have much admiration for Tex Avery, an animation genius whose best cartoons are animated masterpieces and some of the best cartoons ever made by anybody. Is it 'Garden Gopher' an Avery masterpiece? Not quite. Does it show what Avery was all about, what makes his work so appealing to many and a good representation of him? Yes it is. There is really not much wrong here, the backgrounds are not always as detailed or refined as most Avery cartoons and it's one of Avery's most daring, original and wickedly deranged efforts.

However, much of the animation is very good indeed, often excellent in fact. Very rich in colour, the backgrounds have meticulously good detail when limitations don't kick in occasionally and the character designs are distinctively Avery in style and are fluid in movement. The music, courtesy of Scott Bradley, is typically lushly and cleverly orchestrated, with lively and energetic rhythms and fits very well indeed, even enhancing the action.

Can't fault Avery, whose unmistakable and unlike-any-other style is all over, nor the dynamic voice acting and the very engaging characters, especially Spike. The battle between him and the gopher is predictable in outcome but beautifully paced, always very lively, and with plenty of humour and visual invention to keep everything interesting.

'Garden Gopher' is incredibly funny throughout, hilarious even at its best which is very important in a cartoon with as many gags as this does. The story is not a new one but has enough variety and such to not make that matter so much.

All in all, very good. 8/10 Bethany Cox