Tex Avery is a man who needs no introduction to even the most casual animation fan. His frantic, zany, bizarre cartoons for Warner Brothers, MGM, and Walter Lantz are among the most influential ever filmed. MGM/UA has released four volumes of Tex Avery's Screwball Classics, each containing a healthy dose of Avery's work at MGM. After years of seeing shopworn copies of Avery's cartoons on TV, it's a pleasure to see his work in crystal-clear prints, with razor-sharp sound to match.
Avery told Joe Adamson in Tex Avery: King of Cartoons that he designed his cartoons for adult audiences. Children will enjoy the slapstick of Avery's cartoons, but they also contain extreme cartoony violence, mental illness, racial stereotypes, and suicide. Parents may wish to exercise a judgement call. Watch the entire volume first *before* letting Tex Avery be your child's babysitter.
If I could recommend only one of the four volumes, it would be the second. Volume two simply contains a greater concentration of Avery's funniest and/or most important cartoons. These include Red Hot Riding Hood, the first of Avery's series of cartoons in which a wolf hilariously overreacts to the sexy antics of a dancing girl; Northwest Hounded Police, an odd caper in which an escaped con finds that Officer Droopy seems to be everywhere at once; Slap Happy Lion, a weird parable about a King of the Jungle who is terrified of a mouse; Happy Go Nutty, perhaps the logical extension of the Looney Tunes in which Screwy Squirrel is actually the inmate of an asylum.
Avery's characters are a motley crew of misfits. Wolves which strongly resemble the Disney version of the Big Bad Wolf lust after semi-realistically drawn redheads and are pursued by semmingly insignicicant but actually omnipotent Droopy Dogs. Screwy Squirrel is literally insane and makes life miserable for hunters and dimwitted bloodhounds. All of the characters in Avery's MGM cartoons are drawn in a highly distinct style. They don't quite look like the Warner Brothers characters, are far more rubbery than those of Famous Studios, and owe quite a bit in elegant spare curves to Walt Disney (Preston Blair, Avery's chief animator, was responsible for the Dance of the Hours segment of Fantasia). Their double and triple takes are bug-eyed slack-jawed marvels to behold.
Words can't describe how funny the gags in these movies are - you have to see them to believe them. And then you'll probably have to watch them again just to make sure you didn't miss anything. They're incredibly silly productions, the type of cartoons that simply aren't made anymore.
If seeing this compliation leaves you wanting more, here are a few facts about Avery: He created Daffy Duck and Droopy, defined Bugs Bunny as we know him, was nominated for four Academy Awards, and was sadly underappreciated by the masses before his 1980 death. He never lived to see the Avery style of animation become so influential in TV advertising, let alone the Who Framed Roger Rabbit film. If there's a Toontown in the afterlife, you can bet that Avery is keeping the angels in stitches.
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Other NonAnime Reviews Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle Review* American Pop Review* Bug's Life Review* Fantasia Review* Lord of the Rings Review |
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