Porky's Garden

Here is another favorite Porky Pig cartoon from 1937, after seeing it for the first time on YouTube. Tex Avery directed the cartoon, marking it as his last one until "Porky's Preview" in 1941.

The story goes that Porky and a stereotypical Italian chicken farmer compete for the prize for "largest home-grown product" at the county fair. The farmer tried putting vitamins and supplements in the feed, but his chickens wouldn't go for it. Since he wasn't going to play fair, the farmer let his chicken brood loose in Porky's garden to feast upon.

I love it when a chick morphs into a Popeye lookalike after he eats spinach and gives a bully chicken his/her comeuppance. Porky guards the pumpkin from the hens, just like in a football game, which I enjoy. So anyway, I like this Porky short and give it seven stars.

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.

Tex Avery is a genius of animation, with his best cartoons being among the best there is. 'Porky's Garden' is a pretty good cartoon still, but it is very early Avery and it shows. In his prime (his 1940s MGM years) he was responsible for some hilarious, wonderfully wacky and visually inventive cartoons, in 'Porky's Garden' there is a sense that he had not yet found his feet and was still properly finding his style. He does a good job here, he just went on to much better things that's all.

'Porky's Garden' is pretty predictable and is more amusing than hilarious, it's well timed and are cohesive but slightly unimaginative. For Avery too it's pretty tame, while the supporting characters serve their point well but their personalities don't completely sparkle.

However, the voice acting is solid with Mel Blanc showing as ever why he was the infinitely more preferable voice for Porky and his multifaceted talents as a voice actor.

Animation, while not exactly inventive, is very good. It's fluid in movement, crisp in shading and very meticulous in detail.

Carl Stalling's music score as always is outstanding. It is as always lushly orchestrated, full of lively energy and characterful in rhythm, not only adding to the action but also enhancing it.

When it comes to the humour 'Porky's Garden' is amusing and well-timed, it's just not hilarious and somewhat tame by Avery and Looney Tunes standards. Porky is a very likeable lead character and has the presence and personality to justify why he is a lead, do think though that he is better playing it straight against characters with stronger and funnier personalities.

In conclusion, pretty good but by Avery standards it underwhelms a little. 7/10 Bethany Cox

"Porky's Garden" is a remnant of the days when Porky Pig was still the Warner Bros. cartoon star (Daffy Duck had debuted a few months earlier, but didn't get to carry a cartoon until 1938). In these early cartoons, the Termite Terrace crowd cast Porky as a simple guy in roles representing everyday life. Here he grows his vegetables very large for a contest, but his neighbor is also participating and has no qualms about undermining Porky's chances.

I would say that in between Porky's debut and the US entry into WWII, Porky's only really significant cartoons were "Porky's Duck Hunt" (in which Daffy debuted), "Porky in Wackyland" and "Old Glory". Otherwise, most of his roles were pretty hokey. He got really good after the war, when Chuck Jones had him interfere with Daffy's craziness. This one's worth seeing maybe once.