Speaking of Animals and Their Families

In 1941 Tex Avery started a series of cartoons 'Speaking of Animals'. These cartoons may not be among the best cartoons there's ever been and those with Avery's involvement are not among the best he's ever done, but they are very interesting and entertaining on the most part with a unique visual style.

'Speaking of Animals and Their Families' may not be one of the best of the 'Speaking of Animals' cartoons, but it's still a good and interesting one. It's not one of the funniest cartoons in the series or the liveliest and it's one of the cartoons in the series where the slightness of the story is more obvious than others. Once again, it is interesting from a visual and historical perspective and makes it easy to see why the series was important and popular at the time, the unique visual style is great to watch.

Once again, has ingenious use of Rotoscoping, with animation being re-shot and matted into the animal footage, and its combining of live action animals and animated mouths similarly looks incredible. It's this that is the shorts', and for the series in general, most striking and notable asset.

There are amusing moments and the family devotion is very cute and charming. The music is lively and beautifully orchestrated and fitting Gayne Whitman does a good job voicing and the ever versatile Mel Blanc excels even more.

In summary, good cartoon if not one of the series' best. Haven't yet seen the other nominees in the Oscars category for that year so it is hard to say whether the win here was deserved or not. 7/10 Bethany Cox

A collection of zoo occupants are filmed in their not-so-natural habitats and given the opportunity to offer us a quick comment about their young. It's the usual suspects from this series of light-hearted features that appear but it's probably only the owls that stood out for me, with the little chick offering us an apt critique of the whole film in just a few well chosen words. The visual effects synchronise their lips with their quips quite nicely and it probably served entertainingly enough as an introduction to animals for many an urban child who might never have seen them before, but otherwise it tries to squeeze a little too much fom the joke.