Un Mago Musical

As long as we understand that "Magical Maestro" contains some politically incorrect scenes, we can enjoy it for the purely crazy, as a sadistic magician plays all sorts of tricks on a snobbish opera singer by changing the guy's persona every couple of seconds. I think that my favorite one was the little kid.

I believe that it was the Klingons on "Star Trek" who declared "Revenge is a dish best served cold." Maybe the magician doesn't go quite that far, but he sure has some funny things up his sleeve! It just goes to show that while Tex Avery may not have been as clever as the people behind the Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies cartoons, he certainly had some great ideas. Worth seeing.

Let me first state that I think that Tex Avery is to the animated short what Walt Disney was to the feature-length animated film. So many of the conventions of animated shorts were either started by Avery or so effectively used by him that he gave us the cartoon format that we know and, hopefully, love. And Magical Maestro is vintage Tex Avery-gags fired at the viewer one right after another, most of them hilarious. This is excellent work from a master of a highly under-rated art form. Bravo! Encore!

This is a wonderful Tex Avery cartoon. It's very funny and fresh as well as very fast-paced. A singer insults a magician and in turn the magician dresses as the musical director and then uses his magic wand to make lots of crazy and impossible things happen to the singer during the performance. It's completely Tex Avery due to the pacing and humor. There are two problems that keep it from being rated any higher. First, as the 50s arrived, production values on the MGM cartoons (particularly the animation and backgrounds) began to suffer. While this isn't as bad as the later Avery efforts in this regard, the art just isn't up to the standards as earlier Avery classics. Second, it is quite possible that some people could feel offended by the short clip where the singer becomes a black singer (sounding a lot like one of the Mills Brothers). While this isn't the most obvious of racial insults (there were many worse ones during the era), some might not enjoy this or the Chinese characterizations. Don't skip the film, though--that would make you a reactionary idiot.

For my money, Avery's finest cartoon...for years Avery tried to answer PORKY IN WACKYLAND, with out full manic success...this surpasses all previous Avery efforts with wit, sophistication and of course with dropped anvils. Plus, the satire is razor-sharp.

Avoid the butchered "politically correct" edits on Cartoon Network---seek out the slightly offensive but imposingly hilarious original.

This has been one of my favorites since I was a kid. The machinations that Mysto the Magician goes through to upstage Poochini are hilarious. Notice the hair on the film gag? My favorite change is the one near the end where Poochini's a Polynesian (?) dancer and the two rabbits are beside him! One word of warning though - On Cartoon Network, they have cut three of the changes (Chinese, both Blackface) so it's not as good as the uncut version.