The CooCoo Nut Grove

Early animation short most notable for the fun trying to figure out who the caricatures are. Most are very easy for an old movie buff but a few might be a challenge. The dance described in the previous review where Oliver Hardy is concealing the fact he is dancing with more than one woman with his back turned isn't in this short. That segment is from a similar cartoon titled Hollywood Steps Out that came a few years later and also included Hollywood stars in a nightclub. This nostalgic little cartoon was shown by Turner Classic Movies as part of their Cartoon Alley. I decided to set up a TiVo season pass for TCM cartoons after watching this one to see what other treasures might show up. I do hope the stars weren't offended by their appearance in this cartoon. One of Hollywood's greatest will be pictured as a horse now whenever seen in a film by this reviewer.

Friz Freleng's 'The Coo Coo Nut Grove' is a Hollywood stars caricature cartoon with a difference. The difference is that some of the celebrities are portrayed as animals. Harpo Marx is a bird, Laurel and Hardy are a pig and a monkey, Katherine Hepburn is a horse, etc. This promising concept is soured, however, by the odd fact that only some of the stars are animals. Curiously, some of the caricatures are humans. I can't help but feel that it would have been a funnier concept had all of the characters been animals or humans. Mixing them together just makes it seem odd, particularly when we discover that Groucho Marx is a human while Harpo is a bird?! Tex Avery made a much better caricature cartoon five years later called 'Hollywood Steps Out' in which all the stars were portrayed in their human form. As is generally the case with these cartoons, the fun is in spotting the celebrities and trying to get the references. 'The Coo Coo Nut Grove' would have brought the house down in its day when all the references were topical, now its more fascinating than funny.

Although not flawlessly executed, cartoons with a lot of caricatures are potentially problematic, was still mostly very entertaining. A relatively early Looney Tunes/ Merrie Melodies effort for Fritz Freleng, this is not him at his best with his masterpieces coming much better, but there is no mistaking his style and it's hard not to like.

It is agreed that 'The CooCoo Nut Grove' is a little jumbled, it was a lot of fun guessing who was who and seeing some of them as animals (very imaginatively done and actually come off better than the caricatures not presented as animals) but others are still human, and it definitely would have been better if it was one or the other (seeing them as animals would be more inventive) which would have made things a little more focused and less strange.

Most of the caricatures for any classic film fans (count me as one) will be immediately recognisable, and misfires are very few. The caricatures are very funny and the references are of the time somewhat but hold up better today than a fair few other similar cartoons. There are a couple of less familiar ones here too, so they come off less successfully when they go over one's head.

In terms of animation quality, the cartoon is quite beautifully done, with lovingly detailed backgrounds and vibrant colours. The music brims with lively energy and luscious orchestration, not only being dynamic to the action and adding to it but enhancing it as well.

While light on story, the wild and wacky energy more than compensates, as does the voice acting, no Mel Blanc but 'The CooCoo Nut Grove' doesn't suffer in any way without him.

On the whole, immensely fun. 8/10 Bethany Cox

The CooCoo Nut Grove (1936)

*** (out of 4)

There's not too much story here but there are certainly a great number of site gags. What we have is a Warner animated short that takes place inside a night club where a variety of movie stars are hanging. If you showed this film to most people today they probably wouldn't know very many people but if you're a film buff then you'll certainly understand it a lot more as there are a number of screen stars on full display here. Oliver and Hardy, the Marx Brothers, Clark Gable, W.C. Fields, Charles Laughton, Joan Crawford, Katharine Hepburn, Edward G. Robinson, Gary Cooper, Wallace Beery, George Raft, John Barrymore and Johnny Weissmueller are just a few of the stars that we see here. You have to laugh at some of the characterizations on display but I must admit that I've always been amazed that the studios were willing to make fun of various stars. You've got Gable here with giant flapping ears. Hepburn is shown to have a horse's face. You get the idea. The film is actually a lot of fun and I'm sure film buffs will enjoy it.

Anyone who's seen enough Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies cartoons should know that the creators really liked to poke fun at Hollywood in their cartoons. An example is Friz Freleng's "The CooCoo Nut Grove". We see caricatures of Walter Winchell, Katharine Hepburn (called Ms. Heartburn), Laurel and Hardy, Clark Gable and more.

Obviously, the problem with these sorts of cartoons is that we in the 21st century might not know who the targets are. I'd certainly never heard of Ben Bernie before this. But as long as we just pay attention to the wacky jokes and gags, the cartoon remains a hoot. I guess that as long as there's the celebrity culture - which by now has grown seemingly to a million times the size of what it was in the '30s, partially due to the media fawning over them - there will always be something to spoof.