La maison du futur

The narrator holds out a tiny box which opens up to be the house of tomorrow. It's a lot of wacky futuristic innovations as they walk through the house. Every scene holds some sight gags.

It's a Tex Avery MGM cartoon. It's a series of inventive sight gags. It's fun. The in-law joke does get repetitive. It's one gag after another. There isn't much to the flow or pacing. What it does need is a recognizable character as the lead. It needs a family of known characters. As it stands, it has a standard 50's non-descript nuclear family. It's perfectly fine, but it needs a better narrative. Maybe a thief can break into the House of Tomorrow.

Here's one of Tex Avery's cartoons on a theme, to wit: the latest and proposed advanced in the details and technology for living at home.

The gags are as good as Avery's usual, and the pacing likewise. It is, however, the narration which sets the pace, and makes them seem more deliberate that slows it down. I am certain there are as many gags as usual, the artwork is up to standard -- it would shortly begin to go downhill under the pressure of shrinking budgets -- but the narration, while perhaps necessary, makes them seem less spontaneous than usual.

Which makes this merely a fine, funny cartoon.

"The House of Tomorrow" is a great Tex Avery short which focuses in on the wonderful inventions certain to be part of our lives in the near future. Many of the gags are very clever and original. The machine designed to answer all of your children's questions is my favorite. Though, I give this short high marks, it still gets into a major rut. That being, the overuse of the Mother-in-law jokes. Those segments can only be called predictable, a word you'd almost never use to describe the work of Mr. Avery.

The model the female model in this cartoon is not Irene Dunn! Irene for one thing was a Burnette the girl in the cartoon is a blonde! Also the girl in the Bikini is very young. Irene was born in 1898 she would of been over 50 years old when this cartoon was made!IMDb is becoming more and more inaccurate. I don't know who the Bikini girl is yet.Its safe to say it is not Irene Dunn. The bikini girl does look like Virginia Mayo.It is possible that it could very well be her seeing she was working at MGM at the same time .It was either a very young stock footage of Virginia Mayo or it was stock footage of another girl during the same time era.

I have to admit that I only loosely know Tex Avery's work (namely that it was the inspiration for "The Mask"), but "The House of Tomorrow" is still a treat. A look at how people in 1949 imagined that future dwellings would be - think "The Jetsons" - there are some things that might eat at us in the 21st century, namely the fact that the cartoon envisions housewives staying home cooking and cleaning while their husbands go to work.

But, as long as we understand that this cartoon was a product of its era, we can accept it for what it is. And I think that everyone can agree about the mother-in-law; it looks like they were talking about Endora on "Bewitched". In conclusion, this cartoon will always remain a classic! And about that woman on dad's TV: meow meow...