King-Size Canary (1947) User Reviews

Tex Avery's animal magic

[didi-5 · 7/10 · 9 December 2006]

'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.

Ten Upsmanship

[Hitchcoc · 8/10 · 26 December 2015]

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.

It's Tex Avery at MGM! What more could you want?!

[planktonrules · 9/10 · 1 November 2008]

The Tex Avery cartoons at MGM are among the very best cartoon shorts ever made. Their insane sensibilities, irreverent attitude and silliness make them all timeless classics and KING-SIZE CANARY is certainly no exception.

The film starts with a hungry cat looking for something to eat in the alley. He looks through binoculars at a house and spots a "Coldernell" refrigerator and figures he can get something to eat there. When he catches the mouse in the house, it tells him he'd read the script and the cat was supposed to eat the canary in the next room! But, when the cat sees that the bird is minuscule, he gets an idea and feeds it "Jumbo Gro" liquid. Now the canary is huge....so huge that the tables are now turned! Well, somehow the dog and mouse get involved and this Jumbo Gro is an amazing product--you take a swallow and almost instantly become huge--leading to a rather cute ending.

The bottom line is that this cartoon isn't exactly "high art" but it's doggone funny. You'll laugh and have a great time, so give it a try today!

Absolute genius!

[raykeller · 17 April 2003]

Tex Avery, IMHO, is probably hands-down the best at his craft. Current stuff -- just that, stuff. The closest I've seen of recent work would have to be the four Roger Rabbit/Baby Herman cartoons (including the short that opened the film, "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?").

This simple premise -- starving cat & undersized intended snack -- is complicated by a miraculous growth fertilizer and spirals rapidly out of control to a completely ridiculous conclusion.

I was lucky enough to own the box-set of laserdiscs which included every cartoon Tex Avery made for MGM, and I would have paid three times what I did for it. Although this particular cartoon wasn't my favorite (I might have to lean toward one of the two versions of "Northwest Hounded Police" in which double-takes and eyeball gags are elevated to an art form), it was certainly in the upper levels. Another high-ranking short: "Bad Luck Blackie", in which a black cat simply struts in front of a surprisingly vicious bulldog to bring him instant -- and potentially lethal -- bad luck.

Try to see these shorts unedited, not the hacked 'politically correct' versions being shown on some cable cartoon shows. Absolutely the best animation for sheer hilarity that has ever been committed to celluloid.

A Must-Be-Seen-To-Be-Believed Masterpiece

[tbrittreid · 10/10 · 12 August 2000]

Of Tex Avery's three masterpieces, "King-Size Canary" is the best of the lot. (In case you're wondering, the other two are "Who Killed Who?" and "Red Hot Riding Hood," both 1943.) This has to be seen to be believed, let alone appreciated. I once tried to describe it to a friend, one who admitted affection for Chuck Jones' Bugs/Daffy/Elmer hunting trilogy from Warner Bros., and failed miserably to do it justice. The insanity builds from a merely amusing opening to a mind-boggling yet inevitable finale, an image that will stay with you for some time after the fade-out.

KING-SIZE CANARY (Tex Avery, 1947) ****

[Bunuel1976 · 10/10 · 3 March 2008]

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!

Too big to fail?

[Horst_In_Translation · 6/10 · 10 September 2015]

"King-Size Canary" is certainly among the most famous cartoons by Tex Avery and also among the most famous from the 1940s. This one here is about a starving cat who finds a growth elixir and gives it to the chicken he is about to eat. Unfortunately, it grows a bit more then expected. So the cat takes some as well and relations are fine again? Or are they really? Things become even more mayhem when a dog and mouse come into play, also with altered sizes. The joke is very much the same for these 7 minutes and it's not too groundbreaking in any way in my opinion, but still it was a decent watch. Nonetheless I must say that Avery cartoons lack something in terms of heart and recognition value compared to Disney's and Warner Bros's finest. All in all, recommended, but not a must-see by any means.

The quintessential Tex Avery cartoon.

[llltdesq · 10/10 · 15 November 2002]

While I do not personally think this is Avery's best cartoon (that honor goes to The Legend of Rockabye Point) and this one is also not among my personal favorites, this is the ultimate in Tex Avery cartoons. Everything Avery strived to do is here-he loved taking a quasi-normal situation, tossing in a random, improbable element or three and then piling sight gag after sight gag, each one more outlandish than the ones before. The jokes are all sight gags. What dialogue there is is generally there as necessary for set-up and only one or two lines are even mildly funny. Just sight gags, as far as the eye can see, fast enough to register, but so fast that you almost don't have time to breathe because you're laughing so hard. This one makes you want to do things like hang spoons from your nose! Wildly silly and unforgettable, truly a masterpiece. This is a great cartoon! It worked 55 years ago and it works today. You have to see this one. Most highly recommended.

good Tex Avery

[SnoopyStyle · 7/10 · 8 May 2021]

An alley cat struggles to find any food. He spots a nice home with a refrigerator. Only problem is the guard dog Atom. There turns out to be nothing in the house except a tiny mouse. In order to escape, the mouse directs the cat to a canary but the canary turns out to be tiny. That's when the cat finds a bottle of Jumbo Gro plant fertilizer. I like the premise up to a point. It grows out of room sort of speak.

Pullin' out that bottle of Whup-ass

[martin63 · 10/10 · 3 October 2001]

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.

Clever

[gbill-74877 · 7/10 · 21 July 2021]

The gag with the cat, dog, bird, and mouse guzzling down "Jumbo Gro" to get bigger in an arms race of sorts is repeated quite a bit in this little cartoon from Tex Avery, but it also features clever bits of animation. One of the dog's eyes acting as a searchlight, for instance, or the bird rearranging the cat's face on his back before realizing it's scowling at him. Great voices for the dopey cat and streetwise mouse too, the latter of whom we naturally see reading "The Lost Squeek End." I don't read too much into possible Cold War symbolism because the intention seems to be much more about wacky exaggeration than it does political satire, but it was interesting that on the globe at the end, the cat stands over America and the mouse over the Soviet Union.

A king-sized delight

[TheLittleSongbird · 10/10 · 24 October 2017]

Love animation, it was a big part of my life as a child, particularly Disney, Looney Tunes and Tom and Jerry, and still love it whether it's film, television or cartoons.

Also have much admiration for Tex Avery, an animation genius whose best cartoons are animated masterpieces and some of the best he ever did. Have yet to see a "bad" Tex Avery cartoon, of the ones seen so far (which has been a vast majority) his weakest have still been decent. 'King-Size Canary' is often considered one of his greatest, have to completely agree with this. One of my favourites of his along with 'Red Hot Riding Hood', 'Who Killed Who?', 'Rock-a-Bye Bear' and 'The Legend of Rockabye Point', most of his Droopy cartoons and the likes of 'Magical Maestro', 'A Wild Hare' and 'Symphony in Slang' are up there too.

Every single one of the characters are great fun and the cartoon makes imaginative use of them. The voice work is impeccable if not quite as big a tour-De-force as 'Red Hot Riding Hood'.

Can't say anything bad about Avery's direction. He does a wonderful job directing, with his unique, unlike-any-other visual and characteristic and incredibly distinctive wacky humour style all over it as can be expected.

Once again there is nothing sadistic or repetitious, instead it's imaginative, wonderfully wild, deliciously deranged, violent but imaginatively so, shockingly racy, red hot sexy and hilarious throughout from start to finish. The sight gags throughout are an absolute joy and are immaculate in timing.

It is no surprise either that the animation is superb, being rich in colour and detail. The character designs are unique, Avery always did have creative character designs, and suitably fluid. The music, courtesy of Scott Bradley, is lushly and cleverly orchestrated, with lively and energetic rhythms and fits very well indeed.

Overall, simply amazing and one of my favourites. 10/10 Bethany Cox

Meh!

[imdb-25288 · 6/10 · 13 April 2021]

Nothing to sneeze at. The only funny part is when the canary removed the cat's fangs, eyes and red nose and then put them back on all screwy. I laughed out loud. Otherwise this is not that remarkable. I don't get why it rates as 10th most funny and that 2000 review that calls it a "masterpiece"? How easy are the sheep duped! It's not that great and Tex Avery had some GREAT cartoons. Where did they all go?

The Logical End When You Run Out Of Time

[boblipton · 10/10 · 8 May 2021]

Tex Avery did a lot of classic cartoons and this is often considered the best of them; it appears frequently on the list of best cartoons of all times. I can't argue with that assertion. Its individual gags, from the tiny bird announcing "I've been sick!" to the mouse who is reading THE LOST SQUEAKEND are numerous, well executed and very funny.

And yet it suffers, I think from a weak ending. Avery was far more interested in the gags than the structure of his cartoons, and given their set length, he'd end them pretty abruptly That happens here, and its one of his few, albeit typical flaws.