User reviews

"Porky in Wackyland" is a true milestone in animation. It is an amazing example of no-holds-barred animation. It's very obvious the artists had a great time just letting their imaginations go wild on this one. The plot is simple, Porky Pig is searching for the last Do-Do bird. His quest leads him to Wackyland. In Wackyland anything can happen...that's what animation is all about if you ask me. Anything can be brought to life in animation, all you have to do is dream it and draw it. "Porky in Wackyland" represents many crazy dreams, and many wonderful drawings. And on top of it all, it's very funny!

This cartoon is an early pinnacle of animation insanity, the prototypical Warner Brothers short. A blitzkrieg of jokes, puns, and free-wheeling mayhem, WB-style cartoons sometimes equaled, but never surpassed, "Porky in Wackyland". Every square inch of every frame is packed with information that flows in several directions at once. Carl Stalling's score is as integral to this cartoon as any of the visual elements (and more so than the "script"). For these, and many other, reasons, "Porky in Wackyland" is the blueprint for the best of WB cartoons, as well as a signpost to various late-20th Century highbrow/lowbrow aesthetics.

This is almost too wacky - but as long as you remember this Looney Tunes cartoon is supposed to be wacky it can be funny in places. I say this because some of the wackiness in "Porky in Wackyland" seems very silly and almost disturbing, but as long as you see the funny side of it, it is perfectly fine. If you do not like anything that is remotely crazy, wacky or silly, then this will be an utter nightmare for you (if you happen to be being forced to watch it, otherwise, you ought to stop watching IMMEDIATELY).

I enjoyed this episode for its craziness, Porky, the Dodo, the animation and some of the jokes included. I will have to watch this episode a great deal of times before I remember all of the jokes and you probably will have to as well (unless you did not like it).

This episode starts with a newspaper article about Porky going to hunt the last dodo. He goes to darkest Africa (the portrayal of this is not a comfortable one for me, which is odd), to a place "where anything can happen". The population of this area unknown to everybody else is 100 nuts and one squirrel (this is the first proper joke). After this - most things do happen...

I recommend this to people who like old Looney Tunes, Porky and wackiness. Not only is this also worth watching for historical value, but it is surprisingly good for modern audiences as well. Enjoy "Porky in Wackyland"! :-)

This black-and-white early Looney Tunes cartoon looks different, sounds different...and is terrific.

We read in the "The Globe" that Porky is off on a rare do-do bird hunt, trying to get a bird that is nearly extinct and worth billions of dollars. He flies off to "darkest Africa" and winds up in "Wackyland" where the population is "100 nuts and a squirrel" and the sign that says that audibly speaks to Porky saying "It can happen here!!!!"

With that, we start seeing some really bizarre things regarding the scenery, the characters who inhabit this place and the weird things that happen. It looked a cross between a Salvardor Dali painting and Alice In Wonderful.

Porky is then led to "the last of the do-do birds" and this a one strange bird, who fits right into Wackyland.

This is great stuff, a real visual treat and a cartoon you could enjoy over and over just trying to catch all of the sight gags and great drawings in here. I couldn't help wonder what the audience thought way back in the 1930s. This had to be something really unusual for them to see.

Porky in Wackyland is a surreal if silly cartoon short that has been described as Daliesque but I guess the animators were surely on the funny baccy to come up with such a far out cartoon.

In darkest Africa Porky Pig sets out to catch the the mythical Do-Do bird a plot point not lost on the makers of Pixar's Up!

When he arrives he encounters all sorts of tomfoolery such as the sun coming up in the form of a human pyramid, a two headed dog fighting for itself and a three headed figure beast in the form of The Three Stooges before he starts the search for the Do-Do bird.

When we do finally see the bird we can only presume he got a script and mannerisms normally preserved for Bugs Bunny. Undoubtedly this is an unusual, avantgarde and also thought provoking cartoon.

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.

(IMO) - If ever there was a vintage Warner Bros. cartoon that so rightly deserved to be recognized as a bona fide "Looney Tune" - I'd definitely say that "Porky In Wackyland" would, indeed, be it.

Anyway - As this one's story goes - In his challenging quest to hopefully locate and eventually capture the last of the elusive Do-Do birds, Porky Pig single-mindedly flies off to "darkest" Africa.

And, once he lands and crosses the tree-lined border into Wackyland, Porky quickly encounters all sorts of eccentric, oddball characters who are all parading around in a truly bizarre setting of dream-like landscapes that were clearly inspired by the artwork of surrealist painter, Salvador Dali.

So, if you enjoy watching decidedly quirky cartoons, then, this particular offering (from director, Robert Clampett) is most certain to be right up your alley.

In 1937 Robert Clampett was promoted to director and one year later he created his first, true classic cartoon of the many that he would direct for Warner Bros. studio: Porky in Wackyland. Along with Tex Avery and Frank Tashlin, Clampett was instrumental in creating the Warner style. He was an innovator who liked to push the boundaries of the medium, and Wackyland is a perfect example of this. It was also the first of Clampett's many cartoons to use hallucinatory, surrealistic images; others would include The Great Piggy Bank Robbery, The Big Snooze and Tin Pan Alley Cats (which re-used animation from Porky in Wackyland.) Wackyland was later remade in color as Dough for the Do-Do by Friz Freleng.

Watching this fabulous pre-WWII creation, I was immediately reminded of the American cartoonist R. Crumb. What is interesting is that R. Crumb admitted to taking hallucinogenic drugs to draw his strange comics in the late 1960's. Of course, this cartoon with Porky Pig doesn't include Crumb's sense of pornography (thankfully). Crumb's comics are simply rehash seeing some of the inhabitants of Wackyland. I wonder what the illustrators back then did to create such fantastic off the wall stuff. Sure, there were some obvious inspirations in this cartoon (3 stooges) but just about everything is going insane!

Thoroughly enjoyable and liberating cartoon for 1938! I saw it in color on Cartoonland. I wonder if I saw the colorized version (It was in color...)

Porky Pig goes on a hunt to catch the surreally elusive last Do-Do bird.

This cartoon has been credited as the 8th best cartoon ever made. I am not going to get into the minutia of deciding if it is better or worse than 8th, but it absolutely needs to be on that list, because it takes such a simple thing and makes it so strange.

The way I saw this was side by side with "Dough for the Do-Do". You could watch them individually, but side by side will blow your mind. Almost all of the scenes are identical, though some of the backgrounds are colored differently. Saying one is better than the other is hard to do.

I am a huge fan of Looney Tunes, and I do like Porky Pig. Porky in Wackyland is not only one of Porky's best cartoons but one of Bob Clampett's masterpieces. The animation is wonderful, none of the characters are blockily drawn and the background art is fluid and inventive. The music is energetic and very infectious. The story is very well paced and interesting, and the dialogue and gags are wonderfully funny and surreal, not to mention wacky. Porky is great here with great dialogue and personality and he even gets to ride a really sweet little plane, the dodo is the cutest cartoon dodo I've seen and they wouldn't be extinct possibly if they had the intelligence and skills that this dodo had. Mel Blanc gives a bravura vocal performance, and Billy Bletcher even shows up briefly as a Goon. In conclusion, a brilliant cartoon and one of Porky and Clampett's best. 10/10 Bethany Cox

This short has Porky hunting for the last of the Do-Do Birds. He ventures into the strange and hilarious Wackyland to find him. It's a classic Warner Bros. short with wild and random things happening every second. One of Porky's best.

This 21 minute documentary on the work of Bob Clampett can be seen on Disc 3 of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume 2. And is very much worth it for any fan of his, of which I certainly am. Featuring interviews by his daughter, fellow cartoonists, and other notables, it also features clips of his work as well as old stills of behind the scenes stuff. This is great stuff and i loved watching every second of it. Needless to say I feel that this is the best "Behind the Tunes" featurette of all that I've seen hands-down. There will never be another Bob Clampett in my or your lifetime.

My Grade: A+

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".

Bob Clampett's famous black and white classic 'Porky in Wackyland' is a glorious glimpse into the mad mind of Clampett allowed to run riot. His trademark energy and ability to stuff a cartoon full to the brim with content are both apparent from the outset as a newsboy invades the cartoon's credits to inform us that Porky Pig is attempting to capture the last Dodo bird. Porky tracks the bird to Wackyland and from the moment his plane begins to tiptoe across the border of Wackyland all bets are off! We are treated to a feast of bizarre, logic defying gags as we are introduced to the inhabitants of Wackyland through a long panning shot which contains literally dozens of jokes. These wild, quickfire gags give way to the main plot after a couple of minutes and so begins one of the greatest cartoon chases of all time as Porky tries in vain to capture the nutty Dodo who constantly defies logic in order to evade and humiliate him. 'Porky in Wackyland' is an extremely influential and exceptionally bonkers cartoon that will appeal to anyone with a love of the surreal and the anarchic. It was later pointlessly remade in colour by Friz Freleng as "Dough for the Dodo", an emasculated take on the original which lacked the essential ingredient: Clampett himself.

I'm not quite sure how I first came across this, but I think I might have first seen it at least as a clip in which Porky encounters the Dodo (now known as Yoyo Dodo, as he would be named over three quarters of a century later in the video game, Looney Tunes: Acme Arsenal). Or I might have actually seen the whole thing when Looney Tunes used to be aired on Nickelodeon. Anyway, as something included in the top ten of The 50 Greatest Cartoons of All Time book and deemed culturally significant by the U.S. Library of Congress, and preserved in the National Film Registry, I can see why. It truly deserves to have its places in those. I find this to be not only one of the most fascinating Warner Bros. cartoons, Looney Tune or Merrie Melody, but also the best from representing the Golden Age of American Animation. It's also a favorite for me, both by Warner Bros. and out of any Golden Era American cartoons in general.

This may be just one of, if not the Looniest Looney Tune ever made, because of how fast-paced it can get for one, that defines it and is what at the quintessence. One of the wackiest or zaniest. Yoyo Dodo is one of the Looniest Looney Tune characters who is reminiscent of the very early Daffy Duck, but a lesser, underused one as well and one of my favorites. Ironically, Yoyo's son Gogo Dodo from Tiny Toon Adventures would get many more appearances in that series. It's also ironic that whereas Wackyland is located somewhere in the vicinity of the Sudan in Africa here, it's instead within Acme Acres in Tiny Toons. For me, the concept of this is one of the greatest ever conceived. Porky heading to a bizarre place in Africa where he encounters the bizarre denizens while searching for Yoyo before attempting the catch him for a large bounty. Mel Blanc did well as always voicing multiple characters. Carl Stalling's score is great. Despite rubber hose animation soon becoming less common and dropped in favor of the more realistic approach around the time this came out, it still has the former kind of animation such as when Yoyo stretches his neck as he gets back all up in Porky's face. Yoyo is a hoot and I wish there were more done with him. Everything about this is great, if anyone can overlook the minor black stereotype/caricature of the Al Jonson duck. I have no idea what one of the other reviewers here was talking about when mentioning that like Wile E. Coyote failing to capture the Road Runner, Porky fails the catch Yoyo when he actually does towards the end. Is he sure he was watching the same short as others have? As for whether I find this or the colorized remake, Dough For The Do-Do, to be better, I'm partial to both. I read that there was a supposedly a computer-colorized version of this short that aired on Nickelodeon. I'd like to see that too. For as long as I had been watching Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies growing up, I've known of the name Robert "Bob" Clampett among others for the longest reading the opening credits in each of the shorts I saw, but at the time, I didn't know anything about differences in the various directors' styles or who did what in what way, or what distinguishes them from one another. As for the reviewer who says nay to this, whatever. Don't listen to him. For those who may be reading about this and are new to the short, I say go for it, I highly recommend it. I love it. The surrealism sums up everything about this side of Looney Tunes's humor in a nutshell. Full of great moments.

As Porky searches for the Do Do, he encounters creatures defying reality and situations that are unexplainable. This doesn't matter because what happens is a portrayal of craziness from the surreal. Porky is nonplussed along the way, never really reacting but, rather, introducing us to the whole array of absurdity. Some of these characters show up in other cartoons, but they had their birthplace here. Once again, we have an animator whose random concepts and dream world's, along with some really interesting sound, set the table for the future. Nice work. Porky eventually morphs into what we are familiar with but provide a little stability to this madness.

Porky in Wackyland is a real creative feat in animation history, as, besides for maybe some of the Fleischer cartoons, there wasn't much like this at the time, as most cartoons were cutesy and trying to replicate that of Disney. The story is fairly simple, Porky travels to a land where anything can happen in search of the extinct Do-Do Bird, and it gives way for Bob Clampett to go completely insane and animate whatever weird and wacky thing comes to his mind. This cartoon doesn't need that much explanation as to why it's so great, it's creative, fun, and has an amazing energy, topped off with some good humor. Porky, while entertaining, isn't the reason this cartoon is great. His reactions to the bizarre world of Wackyland are amusing, but the word itself is what makes this such a fun watch, and the Do-Do is a really fun character, and I won't spoil the ending, but it's hilarious, in a sort of cruel way.

I missed this Looney Tunes short, "Porky in Wackyland," in my first go-around in search of adaptations, reworkings and parodies of Lewis Carroll's Alice books. It's clever, too. An early one from the studio vaults--in black and white and when a pig rather than a rabbit was the cartoon series' main character, it has since been added to the National Film Registry as "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant." The especially zany style might've been unusual for the era, and, indeed, the film was much imitated, including a few plagiarizations and a remake, "Dough for the Do-Do" (1949), which altered its colorful lands to be more surrealistic in the Salvador Dalí tradition rather than the Lewis Carroll one. A couple racial jokes are more common of the times, including a creature parodying Al Jolson in blackface from "The Jazz Singer" (1927). It's the sly references to "Alice in Wonderland" here, though, that most interest me.

Some of this is more obvious than others: "Wacky" instead of "Wonder" in the title, the mushroom field, a character that looks like some cross between the Mad Hatter and the Mare Hare or White Rabbit, Porky Pig falling down a slide in place of a rabbit hole, and lots of other nonsense. Even a CatDog--long before any Nickelodeon show--which I prefer to think as a variation on the fighting Lion and Unicorn from Wonderland (and representing England and Scotland before that). Regardless, the highlight in the cartoon and its Carrollian allusions is the Do-Do, which here apparently resides in the African continent, as opposed the real Dodo birds from the island of Mauritius that went extinct within about a half century of contact with humans--but, that's not what this Do-Do is about.

In the Wonderland book, it's believed that the Dodo is based on Carroll himself, with "Lewis Carroll" additionally being a pseudonym for mathematician and part-time author of children's literature Charles Dodgson. That's because Dodgson had a stutter that allegedly caught him sometimes stuck on the first syllable of his last name: Do-Do. Hence, "Porky in Wackyland" becomes a search for the very author that inspired its parodic landscape and a search conducted no less by the most famous stuttering character in all cartoons, Porky Pig. Th-th-th-that's all, folks!