I would have written about Kongo Roo (1946) years back but Thad Komorowski did such a perfect job in a review on a blog post in 2008 that nothing more needed to be said (alas, the post is long gone).
In this cartoon, writer Cal Howard borrows from both Warner Bros. cartoons and Tex Avery but finishes off the cartoon with something that makes absolute no sense to put that true Columbia stamp on it.
In one scene, hunter Fuzzy Wuzzy (played by Jack Mather?) hides in a kangaroo’s pouch. They both look at each other and then we get an Avery-like telescoping eye-take before the two characters slam into each other and Fuzzy Wuzzy goes back in the pouch.
There’s actually some good timing from director Howard Swift and decent animation. But I still can’t figure out why a cartoon not set in the Congo is named “Kongo-Roo” or what kind of ethnic accent the ostrich (it can’t be an emu, it puts its head in the ground) has, among a bunch of things.
It's interesting how many of the 1930s Columbia cartoons seem like Fleischer gone wrong (although the best of the Color Rhapsodies knock the so-called Color Classics out of the box) and the 1940s ones like Warner Bros. cartoons gone wrong.
ReplyDelete