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Simply Perfect

Sadly Over-hyped

How sad is this?

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

I'm a big fan of cartoons and Warner bros. is the best among the old classic studios and Bob Clampett is my favorite director from that studio. He truly was the man who put the looney in the looney tunes. The endless imagination that's in his cartoons are amazing and "wackyland" is his signature cartoon. I love the layouts and backgrounds, that's work of great surrealism, on the level of Picasco and Salvador Dali. But it's Bob's wacky sense of humor that really shines. His cartoons are so free of inhibition and a lot of great humor comes out of it. I love the monster who suddenly turns gay, the rabbit who swings in the air, the three stooges monster and then there's the do-do and I love the stuff he does, he creates a pencil, draws a door in the air, lifts the door up like it's rubber, goes underneath it, then appears in a floating window that is connected to the door, but porky falls through the window! I love the whole "va da doody o" dance and the "WOOOOOO!" shout. And it has the best ending of any cartoon! Porky finally gets the do-do but 50 other do-dos come to confirm he's the last do-do! "Yeah! WOOOOOOOOO!"

As I understand it, "Porky in Wackyland" was the first of three cartoons in which Porky Pig goes thither*, followed by "Tin Pan Alley Cats" and "Dough for the Do-Do" (which was almost a shot-for-shot remake of this one). In this one and the last one at least, he goes in search of the last Do-Do bird. But no matter what specifically we know about the cartoon's history, it's great to see just how outlandish the animators were willing to get. As the Wackyland sign indicates: "It can happen here." And believe you me, ANYTHING can happen there! And much of that happens even before we meet the zany Do-Do bird! Anyway, this is definitely a classic cartoon. I wholeheartedly recommend it.*"Thither" is Old English for "to there".

1938 was a peak year for screwball comedy, and "Porky in Wackyland" definitely fits that genre. This black-and-white Porky Pig cartoon was directed by Bob Clampett, who, according to some cartoon buffs, put the word "looney" in Looney Tunes, and I agree. "Porky in Wackyland" displays Clampett at perhaps his most quintessential; he stops at absolutely NOTHING in order to create a wacky, silly, anything-for-a-laugh cartoon. In search of a rare Do-Do bird worth a pile of jack, Porky flies into an extremely bizarre world, appropriately named Wackyland, and encounters all kinds of screwball characters & crazy situations! My favorite moments from "Porky in Wackyland" include the following (if you haven't yet seen this classic cartoon, don't read any further). As Porky flies toward Wackyland, it's really nice to see him cheerfully greet the audience and display for everyone a photograph of the Do-Do he seeks. During Porky's difficulty in capturing the bird, it hides behind a zooming Warner Bros. logo and smacks Porky in the face with a slingshot; the logo then zooms out again with the appropriate sliding-guitar effect. And amidst all the kooky characters that Porky meets are a three-headed monster of the Three Stooges (one of my favorite comedy teams) and a small character who buds out of a flower and, after using his nose as a flute, suddenly bangs away on a drumset and tinkers on a very miniature piano.Without a doubt, "Porky in Wackyland" is a cartoon in which director Bob Clampett was not afraid to try anything, no matter how silly, in order to get a laugh. And because we have the benefit of this cartoon being on DVD (Disc 3 of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume 2), it may be helpful to freeze-frame certain moments of the cartoon in order to clearly see all of the various inhabitants of Wackyland.

Wow! Over sixty years later, this cartoon short stands out as one of the greatest achievements in this medium. Bob Clampett, given the complete freedom that producer Leon Schlesinger let him have, spun out some of the weirdest and wackiest ever made.We start out with a typical beginning for that era, Porky Pig is flying to Darkest Africa to find the last Do-Do, worth billions. But what follows is a mind bending journey, where no one evidently studied the laws of physics. Some of the humor are stock Bob Clampett jokes that are repeated in others of his cartoons, but he was always best with visual humor, when he let the animation be the star of the show.