Tex Avery, the King of Cartoons

A nice (though brief) summary of a man who revolutionized animation over a couple of decades starting in the mid-1930's, the legendary Tex Avery. Using gags and a style that markedly shifted away from family-oriented Disney fare, Avery played up exaggerated forms of physical mayhem and the libido in work that still holds up today, though it's occasional objectifying to women and hardly politically correct. I hesitate to say his cartoons were "violent" because despite the hitting or threat of violence between characters, it all seems so exaggerated and was usually followed shortly by the character getting up as if nothing had happened and scurrying off to the next gag. It does have a young adult feel to it though - even in the material excerpted here, there is whiskey drinking, wild male lust, and a suicide.

The characters Avery created included Bugs Bunny, Elmer Fudd, Daffy Duck, and Droopy, and the documentary shows many of their earliest inceptions, which was a treat. He was highly influential to those who would carry on some of these characters, like Chuck Jones who worked for him and is among those interviewed here, and also animators much later, which is apparent in the artwork. Jones and others also provide a pretty decent psychological insight into Avery, though I confess I would have liked more time on his work, instead of things like his bathroom behavior.

The excerpts from the cartoons are simply brilliant, and include the wartime cartoon "Blitz Wolf," featuring a demonic wolf as Hitler, "Der Fewer (Der Better)," the overly horny wolf in "Red Hot Riding Hood" and "Little Rural Riding Hood," and "Bad Luck Blackie," which has a small cat enlisting the services of an alley cat from the "Black Cat Bad Luck Company" to help him with "dog trouble." The humor may seem juvenile and I guess a lot of it is, but there is also quite a bit of sophistication in the gags and their timing. I also loved seeing Avery playing with "alienation techniques" which had his characters making it explicit that they were on film, e.g. Crossing a "technicolor line" into an area of black and white, or running so fast around a corner as to skid off the edges of the film, or plucking what seemed to be a real hair stuck to the bottom of the film's frame. It's great stuff, and I just wish this documentary had been longer than 52 minutes.

The only complaint I could possibly have with this documentary is that I really wish it had been made many years earlier--when Tex Avery was still alive and could have participated in it. Because he and many of his contemporaries had died before 1988 when Turner Entertainment made the show, it lacks a wide number and range of commentaries and relies mostly on younger folks who didn't work on him or a few oldsters (such as Chuck Jones and June Foray). But regardless, it IS well worth seeing--especially because his best work was all made at MGM...and Turner owned these cartoons and could splice them into the documentary. Speaking of that, though, showing his advertising cartoons would have been great. They DID talk about it but showed no examples. Again, I cannot fault the Turner folks-- they seem to have tried their best. Overall, VERY entertaining and a documentary that gives wonderful insight into the best director of short cartoons of all time.

Dull, bland and not very informative about the man Tex Avery himself. Animation is an art (no pun intended) like no other, and who doesn't have at least one favorite cartoon character. I have many favorites, but after watching some of Tex Avery's younger peers describe him as a genius, and the narrator who was dull as a cardboard knife, it was hard for me to even focus on the comments that were made about Tex.

I do understand that Tex's style was unlike Walt Disney's and was intended to appeal to teenagers and young adults, not to toddlers and pre-teens. But I don't understand why Tex's early life was not outlined in more detail, nor were there many anecdotes about what made Tex tick.

I like his body of work. Too bad he died before this documentary was produced and the researchers were limited ion their findings. I give it a barely watchable and very boring 4 out of 10 IMDB rating.