Boo-ze

Slap Happy Lion is an exercise by Tex Avery in exhausting the audience by repeating the same joke faster and faster. A mouse says “Boo!” A lion does a take. Onto the next scene.

In this scene, the shaky lion tries to calm himself with a drink. Nope, the boo-ing mouse is there.



The same routine worked far better in Northwest Hounded Police a few years earlier. Avery’s too much in a hurry in this. And I don’t get any satisfaction in the mouse terrorising a lion into mental illness, though Avery and writer Heck Allen came up with the only suitable ending.

Bob Bentley, Walt Clinton and Ray Abrams animated this short, released in 1947.