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3rd Tier Director
Robinson Crusoe, Jr. Who's Who in the Zoo Daffy's Southern Exposure Hobby Horse Laffs Gopher Goofy The Ducktators The Impatient Patient The Daffy Duckeroo Confusions of a Nutzy Spy Hop and Go Tokio Jokio
Rating: 3/7
Grrrugh...If you need any proof that Bob Clampett is solely responsible for the manic energy infesting his b&w cartoons, this is exhibit freakin' A. Norm McCabe made his solo cartoons using the same people, and out of the 7 McCabe cartoons I have (I'm still missing four and I want 'em!) I can only reccommend a couple.
Obviously Norm would like us to believe that Clampett's b&w spirit lives on, but it isn't so. Porky's head is perfectly round and his facial expressions are the stuff of first year drawing students, not seasoned cartoonists. The native, turtle, other character designs, and the backgrounds would look more appropriate in a coloring book than a WB cartoon. Bad production values aside, none of the gags are any good. The only seriously entertaining moment is when the native starts singing, and the turtle joins in, and I do laugh at the native going, "How ya doin' boss" or somethin' like "Amos and Andy", but that stock gag would work anywhere.
Weak visual gags include the elevator hut and the animals crowded around a water fountain in the middle of the jungle floor. Visual gags just aren't Norm's strong suit. Avery and Clampett's visual gags, from the stadium roof becoming bleachers to the black cat tip-toeing out of a tin can were wonderous exploits in animation, while Norm just draws a literal pun and places it in the middle of the screen (eh, I guess the trashcan is kinda amusing).
They've established a solid premise, Porky getting shipwrecked on a desert island, but they're clueless about what to do with it, and the whole episode is only slightly watchable. The parrot Porky keeps pestering could have done a radical wildtake, not the lame smart alec-y comment he makes. From day-to-day living to hunting to their escape from the island, Porky and the native just move from one scene to the next, and that's about it. Only the spears' whistling through the air comes close to any of Clampett's ideas, and he could have done a better sound effect gag without trying, not to mention placing it in a more complex scene.
Norm definately made better cartoons than this, but there's a reason he doesn't have a single one on the Golden Age collection. Hell, even Hardaway and Dalton have their own side.
Rating:
Rating: 5/7
While I'm still not convinced Norm McCabe was anything more than a poor man's Bob Clampett, he can actually claim some originality here. No one has actually done that snowstorm Daffy wanders through, crying pathos over his hunger and sticking his head out of the blizzard blanketing the whole screen to deliver a smart alec-y remark on the situation. Before that though you have his opening monologue where he looks at the ducks flying away, including one pulling a string of toy ducks behind her, and mulling over the advantages of staying behind for the winter, giving you a dose of his carefree recklessness and the fun of a bunch of ducks sticking their heads out to mock his shortsightedness.
I feel iffy about giving this an 11, since I get this eerie feeling that McCabe was only going through the motions and made this cartoon as good as he made it on accident. Nevertheless, every sequence has at least one thing going for it, whether it's Daffy's discovery of a giant steak (a mirage in the snow - ha ha) or the smoke from the cabin answering his question. It doesn't let down by introducing a wolf and weasel pair, and even if they just rehash some facial expressions Clampett used their combination of deceiving Daffy through crossdressing and dropping hints that they're about to eat him can be seen only here with this particular execution. And yeah, Frank Tashlin would probably handle such a scenario better, but you'll get it from Norm and like it. The wolf does a funny jig while gathering cans in an apron and Daffy remains clueless until they take off their disguises. Their rush to get in character before Daffy shows up is also a hoot, especially that sign the weasel flips around.
This of course leads to a chase where Daffy pauses to make wise-cracks, runs down a tree that gets chopped into a totem pole, and lures the wolf to his doom. It's the only funny and momentous Norman McCabe cartoon with a successful experiment no less. I say ditch your fancy Golden Collections and find a crummy Public Domain tape with this baby today.
Rating:
Rating:
Rating: 4/7
You don't see this everyday: A cartoon from 1943 with the same style of humor as Games Ren and Stimpy (and Southpark to a lesser extent). The story progression is about as wonked as Ren's Retirement or Scotsman in Space; each scene is only topically related to each other and does little to build on the last one. I know this was meant to satirize the events that led to WWII, but when the "Ducktators" get it in the end, I don't feel any satisfaction, mainly because all they do is make speeches, perform marches, and get into one brawl over a peace treaty. And they're just standing by a chicken coop when someone finally decides to beat them up, which certainly doesn't give the moment any impact.
Though some of the incidental gags are clever at first glance, they don't have the cumulative effect to knock my socks off like a b&w Clampett. The treaty filing box that turns out to be a paper shredder is almost amusing, but I think it has too much information for a visual gag (the individual parts of the shredder are labeled, "confetti dispenser", "gear", etc.). I think in fact there are too many gags dedicating too little time to setting them up and taking too long to show the pay off. The entry of the Japanese dictator is marked by an attempt to pose as Chinese to offset the anti-Jap sentiment of the turtle...a scene that should have ended after he stuck the "Japanese Mandated Island" sign on his shell. Plus there's some downright unfunny stuff like the black duck from South Germany (give me a break!) which isn't even saved by the bizarre objects doing the "Sieg Heil!".
The only gags I find funny, Hitler's birth, his "artistic career", and some of his speeches, plus the father time bit, would have worked better as newspaper comics. Okay, I concede that Mussolini's accent is a guilty pleasure, but it's all one-dimensional contemporary satire, the kind Southpark constantly serves up. It's not a film with characterization and continuity, it's an anti-Axis rant, which other WB war cartoons were above. I still reccomend you find it and watch it at least once, since it's a piece of history and does have some educational value (wow, that's a death-sentence).
Rating: 4/7
Norm is definately trying. The drawings, scenery, and animation look spectacular, especially the swamp, the tradeoff cuts between Daffy and Chloe in their first encounter, Chloe's dancing, and Daffy's woo-hooing. The timing is alright, especially when the welcome mat gets swiped from under Daffy's feet. Dr. Jerkyl is a well-meaning, good-natured doctor who seemingly takes pleasure in scaring Daffy without realizing it, and he's an okay design. So what's the problem?
It all feels so perfunctory! There are better uses of Daffy's woo-hooing, better Dr. Jekyl/Mr. Hyde jokes, better haunted house and mad scientist lab set-ups, better coocoo bird jokes, better jokes involving Daffy's reflection, better uses of Daffy's design (even the brief asymmetry in his eyes where the smaller one is titled against the blacker, larger one has been used by Clampett). Not only that, the sequencing bites. It takes about a million years of plowing through incidental gags to get to any meaningful action between Daffy and Chloe, and I still black out through most of their chase. Sure it's funny when Chloe dances, but it's even funnier when Yosemite Sam does.
Despite being redundant, some of the unoriginal gags are still funny if only because they're more of a good thing. I do laugh at Daffy's woo-hooing and throwing punches at his reflection, Dr. Jerkyl's elaborate series of test tubes just for making coffee, and his dancing inspite of myself, even if these are not at all delivered with any gusto. The original gags that make this worth watching at all are the welcome matt and the end with Daffy strolling the doctor away. The production values are great, the content is not. And enough with the hiccups already.
Rating:
Rating: 4/7
Norm definately has a style here - Not necessarily a good style but a style - that can best be described as well-defined, large characters in non-descript scenery, often with a simple tree and an outline of a hill or an overhead view of railroad tracks, going through drowsy scene changes with some, but not a lot, of good gags in between. If nothing else, at least he's somewhat getting away from imitating Bob Clampett. I can't help but notice how little material there is to justify the running time, but surprisingly what makes me laugh really makes me laugh.
Not the sign gags at the beginning, though. A little sign "Exhibit A" by a giant ceramic A, "Two crimes solved for the price of one", a pan past three wanted posters, the third a hot babe with a little note tagged on "And you ain't kiddin' brother"...You get the idea. He must've thought all those sign gags Tex Avery did were really funny, that he had to fill the first minute with 'em. Oh well.
There's at least Porky's dog who smashes the alarm clock with a hammer. Not a funny gag in itself, but it does set one up in the form of a hasty action the pooch refrains from at the last second. The first appearence of Missing Lynx leaves me in stitches (And just now I realized how stupid it is that a Nazi spy would have anything to do in the middle of nowhere like this) and he gives the cartoon some of its best material including his accent and disguises. His shrill screams and gapping mouth when dealing with the bomb are decent, if not captivating run-around-the-place animations.
Rating:
Rating: 4/7
So what's my opinion of Smokio Tokio, that Kyotio Rodeo? I think it's just Okio Dokio, apart from what's Hokio Chokio. True, true, whoever drew these caricatures should be surgically altered to look like them, but it has a guy making a club sandwich out of bread-and-meat ration cards, then clubbing himself in the head. No offensive Japanese caricature can ruin that.
That's the rule for Tokio Jokio - If you can ignore the caricatures and laugh at the gags, it's a good cartoon. If the gag relies on the caricature, such as the skunk bit, it's a no go. Another problem is that it rambles on a bit. Funny gags (ones I find funny) include the unfinished submarine going afloat, the "victory suit", the incideniary bomb cookout, plane spotting and the fire station. Gags that toe the line: Two guys stabbing each other with pins; the way they bow really disturbs me, a jingoistic jab at Admiral Yamamoto, the above-mentioned gag where a skunk wears a gas mask, and possibly some other stuff I can't think of right now.
It's not too hot artwise, either. Not only do the unflattering caricatures make the Japanese look like potato-headed monkeys, the background art is often crude and even the Hitler and Mussolini send-ups look flat (Although the way it makes fun of the latter's self-serving identification with ancient Roman history is a hoot). TJ is a mixed bag of really funny gags and really offensive moments. But, yeah, it can stick around.