Cartoon a Day: Goofy Groceries

Goofy Groceries
1941
Directed by Bob Clampett
Available on: Looney Tunes Golden Collection Vol. 3

Sorry for the delay on yesterday's entry. I had to watch it late last night and was too tired to blog, so I'm catching up.

This short represents a style used in several Warner Brothers films where images from products or books come to life in parodies of the names of those items. Another Clampett directed short, "Book Revue," is perhaps a more famous example of this style. "Goofy Groceries" came five years earlier and focuses on products in a grocery store.



Clampett could be one of the most extreme directors in the Warners stable. The cows in the opening of this short are classic Bob Clampett style. Though there are some great pieces of animation, much of the humor has unfortunately lost it's timeliness. We just aren't familiar with some of the product names being poked fun at.



Still, there's a lot to enjoy. The first half of the film, which develops into a Busby Berkeley style presentation with various foods doing the show works quite well.



The second half has various characters doing battle with a gorilla who has escaped from a box of animal crackers. The turtles who emerge from a can of turtle soup and turn into tanks are pretty funny, but overall I think the film might've worked better if they'd stuck with the theme of the first half.