Just so...so bad

Far from Perfect, Far from Terrible

A lot of fun.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

An alley cat is starving and does all he can to find food. Eventually, he breaks into a house and ransacks the contents of the kitchen. He finds a can of cat food, but upon opening it, he finds a mouse who talks him into letting him go, and tells him to eat the canary in the next room. Well, now comes the kicker. The cat finds a bottle of some growth substance. He pours it down the throat of the canary and the thing becomes enormous. Now the cat must drink the stuff and get bigger, followed by a dog, and finally the mouse. You get the point. I won't talk about the ending, but it's pretty much what you would expect from what has happened. We never really question the fact that such a substance exists. Tex Avery handles the expressions and the craziness just fine.

This has always been a favorite cartoon of mine but it was only several years later that I became aware of its reputation as not only one of Avery's greatest cartoons, but the fact that it also exemplifies the delirious heights of invention to which the field could aspire during its heyday. A measure of the cartoon's standing is the fact that it ranked tenth in a 1994 poll compiling the 50 greatest cartoons ever, and was even picked by noted biographer/historian Simon Louvish as being one of the ten best films of all time for the influential "Sight & Sound" poll of 2002! The plot sees a ravenous cat finding only a sickly canary to feed on; noticing a bottle of "Jumbo Gro" (intended for the artificial growth of flowers), it forces a couple of gulps down the bird's throat – resulting in the latter towering above the feline itself! At this, the cat drinks from the bottle itself (so that the size of its meal can become, once again, manageable) but carelessly throws away the recipient – which is then picked up by a mouse and, subsequently, a vicious-looking bulldog (with, every time one takes a sip from it, expanding to an outrageous size)! Soon, they're chasing each other and leaping over the tallest buildings; eventually, the "stuff" runs out – leaving the cat and the mouse at an equivalent dimension…except that they're so big now the two of them are literally standing on top of the world!

'King Size Canary' is one of MGM and Tex Avery's better animation shorts, and concentrates on what might happen if a hungry cat goes in search of food and finds a way to make everything larger! Of course this being cartoon fun you just know that whatever the cat makes larger will end up being too large, and that the gag will progress on and on to its inevitable conclusion. The main characters - cat, dog, bird and mouse - are funny and watchable; the animation is well drawn, and the cartoon is a diverting few minutes.Although MGM's cartoons, Hanna and Barbera aside, are not known as much as the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies of Warner Bros., or the shorts made by Walt Disney, they are not at all bad and can still be appreciated today by any generation.

Whatever Tex Avery was smoking when he came up with this one should be instantly legalized and doled out to the creatively bankrupt. The Classic Avery 'toon, the one he could never quite top, and a joy to behold. Bird, Cat, Dog, and Mouse - in that order - drink from an unassuming-looking bottle of Jumbo-Grow plant food. I won't give away the ending, but I wouldn't mind a sequel if only to find out what could possibly happen next.