A Day at the Zoo

I'm always amazed and happy to see the corny puns Tex Avery and others like to present in classic-era cartoons. This cartoon is full of them. The scene is a zoo: "Kalama Zoo," where the "blue plate special" is on at feeding time, etc.

The puns keep comin' as we get a tour of the zoo, complete with a ton of "corn" and wisecracks. Some of it, of course, is really stupid but a good number of the puns are funny. We see camels (smoking), greyhounds (a bus), two bucks (deer) and five scents (skunks)." You get the picture. Very corny.

We see birds, too, such as the "Jail Bird" in a cage with a "Stool Pigeon" in the adjacent one. I'm telling you, it's non-stop cornball material ....and a lot of fun. The ending, with the lion and the idiot that was teasing him, was predictable but still humorous and clever.

nothing surprising. all lovely. because, after decades, the flavor of childhood has the mark of Merrie Melodies, with its silly situations and stupid characters, lessons and show in same package. good entertainment. and a tour at zoo, with the same ingredients of ordinary tour and the legendary Grayhound. so, Merrie Melodies .

A Day at the Zoo is a typically amusing Warner Bros. cartoon directed by Fred "Tex" Avery. You'll see pink elephants, a pack of camels smoking cigarettes, a monkey admonishing a lady trying to feed him when the sign says not to, and a human baboon switching places with an actual one. Some gags are now too dated (like the two panthers walking around and constantly saying, "Bread and butter", or two (human) Elks greeting each other), and the typical speed of Avery has not been fully developed yet (that would come when he moves to MGM). However, there is a historical interest here as this has a recurring gag appearance of Egghead, a precursor to Elmer Fudd, who keeps teasing a caged lion even after the narrator tells him not too. Egghead keeps saying, "I'm a bad boy" impersonating it's originator, Lou Costello. So to any fan of Avery and Warner cartoons, A Day at the Zoo is worth a look.

If Tex Avery ever made a standard cookiecutter cartoon at Warner Brothers, this was it by a wide margin. The gags are all standards, seen often and it isn't original by any means. But it's delightful and still quite funny even in its familiarity (perhaps because it's so familiar, in fact) and it's well worth watching. Recommended.

A nice little set of jokes concerning various animals at the zoo. For example a Rocky Mountain wildcat that is upset for missing a prize on "bank night" (hence his behavior). Or a pair of well behaved elks (who are two gentlemen - obviously members of the "Elks" Lodge - who are greeting each other (and both are named Bill). A monkey is surprised at his resemblance to a man at the zoo, and convinces the zoo keeper that there must be a mistake here. And another monkey gets angry about a woman who disobeys a simple zoo regulation on a sign. There is also a running joke, with overtones of Lou Costello's running tag line on radio "I'm a baaad boy!" dealing with "Egghead" (the predecessor of "Elmer Fudd") and a Lion. An easy to take cartoon. One problem about using the "You Tube" versions (which, for all I know, is true about the quality of the actual cartoons) is that the sound track is not in sync with the cartoon images. Hopefully someone can fix that.