Porky in Wackyland

This cartoon is an early pinnacle of animation insanity, the prototypical Warner Brothers short. A blitzkrieg of jokes, puns, and free-wheeling mayhem, WB-style cartoons sometimes equaled, but never surpassed, "Porky in Wackyland". Every square inch of every frame is packed with information that flows in several directions at once. Carl Stalling's score is as integral to this cartoon as any of the visual elements (and more so than the "script"). For these, and many other, reasons, "Porky in Wackyland" is the blueprint for the best of WB cartoons, as well as a signpost to various late-20th Century highbrow/lowbrow aesthetics.

This is almost too wacky - but as long as you remember this Looney Tunes cartoon is supposed to be wacky it can be funny in places. I say this because some of the wackiness in "Porky in Wackyland" seems very silly and almost disturbing, but as long as you see the funny side of it, it is perfectly fine. If you do not like anything that is remotely crazy, wacky or silly, then this will be an utter nightmare for you (if you happen to be being forced to watch it, otherwise, you ought to stop watching IMMEDIATELY).

I enjoyed this episode for its craziness, Porky, the Dodo, the animation and some of the jokes included. I will have to watch this episode a great deal of times before I remember all of the jokes and you probably will have to as well (unless you did not like it).

This episode starts with a newspaper article about Porky going to hunt the last dodo. He goes to darkest Africa (the portrayal of this is not a comfortable one for me, which is odd), to a place "where anything can happen". The population of this area unknown to everybody else is 100 nuts and one squirrel (this is the first proper joke). After this - most things do happen...

I recommend this to people who like old Looney Tunes, Porky and wackiness. Not only is this also worth watching for historical value, but it is surprisingly good for modern audiences as well. Enjoy "Porky in Wackyland"! :-)

Porky in Wackyland is a surreal if silly cartoon short that has been described as Daliesque but I guess the animators were surely on the funny baccy to come up with such a far out cartoon.

In darkest Africa Porky Pig sets out to catch the the mythical Do-Do bird a plot point not lost on the makers of Pixar's Up!

When he arrives he encounters all sorts of tomfoolery such as the sun coming up in the form of a human pyramid, a two headed dog fighting for itself and a three headed figure beast in the form of The Three Stooges before he starts the search for the Do-Do bird.

When we do finally see the bird we can only presume he got a script and mannerisms normally preserved for Bugs Bunny. Undoubtedly this is an unusual, avantgarde and also thought provoking cartoon.

In 1937 Robert Clampett was promoted to director and one year later he created his first, true classic cartoon of the many that he would direct for Warner Bros. studio: Porky in Wackyland. Along with Tex Avery and Frank Tashlin, Clampett was instrumental in creating the Warner style. He was an innovator who liked to push the boundaries of the medium, and Wackyland is a perfect example of this. It was also the first of Clampett's many cartoons to use hallucinatory, surrealistic images; others would include The Great Piggy Bank Robbery, The Big Snooze and Tin Pan Alley Cats (which re-used animation from Porky in Wackyland.) Wackyland was later remade in color as Dough for the Do-Do by Friz Freleng.

This black-and-white early Looney Tunes cartoon looks different, sounds different...and is terrific.

We read in the "The Globe" that Porky is off on a rare do-do bird hunt, trying to get a bird that is nearly extinct and worth billions of dollars. He flies off to "darkest Africa" and winds up in "Wackyland" where the population is "100 nuts and a squirrel" and the sign that says that audibly speaks to Porky saying "It can happen here!!!!"

With that, we start seeing some really bizarre things regarding the scenery, the characters who inhabit this place and the weird things that happen. It looked a cross between a Salvardor Dali painting and Alice In Wonderful.

Porky is then led to "the last of the do-do birds" and this a one strange bird, who fits right into Wackyland.

This is great stuff, a real visual treat and a cartoon you could enjoy over and over just trying to catch all of the sight gags and great drawings in here. I couldn't help wonder what the audience thought way back in the 1930s. This had to be something really unusual for them to see.