Are Animals Actors? (1945)
** (out of 4)
Knox Manning narrates this Warner Brothers short that takes a look at various animal acts working in Hollywood. Clocking in at just 14-minutes, the short really does feel much longer as there's not too much imagination to be found and it appears that the studio just found a bunch of stock footage and threw it together so that they could have a film to be shown before a main feature. We see the dog Daisy do some tricks and then we see other dogs doing tricks. From here we get all sorts of special tricks done by monkeys, horses, seals and even a bear. I think the footage is mildly entertaining in its own right but this stuff is mainly going to appeal to film buffs who seek out every short they can get their hands on. None of the material will leave you wanted more and it's easy to say that it's better the acts were shown here instead of each one getting their own short. Manning's narration is pretty bland without delivering any laughs. One wonders if Manning was even putting any feeling into it.
