King-Size Canary

Plot synopsis:
An unnamed alley cat searches for food in some garbage cans late at night. Unable to find anything worth his while (the bones he finds are stolen by other alley cats before he can take a bite) he spots a refrigerator inside a house and heads for it. He sneaks onto the property only to wake a sleeping bulldog. The bulldog chases the cat up to the side of the house. The cat quickly pulls out some sleeping pills, putting the dog into a deep sleep.
Once inside the cat searches for food in the kitchen, but comes up empty. His luck finally changes when he finds a can of cat food. He quickly opens the can and out of the can pops a mouse who is plopped down onto a dinner plate. The cat is about to dig in with a fork but the mouse puts a quick stop to that. He says that the cat can't eat him because he has already seen the cartoon they are in and that he winds up saving the cat's life later. The feline understands but wants some food as he is starving. The mouse points into the other room and tells him that there is a huge, fat, tasty canary in there. The cat charges out into the other room and stuffs the unseen canary into a sack heading back to the kitchen.
The bird is emptied from the sack, to be revealed as scrawny and little. The bird tells the cat, "Well, I've been sick..." Disgusted with the tiny creature at first but still desperate, the cat gets a (literal) brainstorm when he sees a bottle of Jumbo-Gro plant growth formula on the shelf. Quickly he pours some of the formula into the bird and sure enough, the canary grows rapidly in size. But before the cat can take a bite, the bird is already over 10 feet tall. The canary takes advantage of his new height and beats up on the cat. The cat turns the tables on the bird and drinks the Jumbo-Gro formula himself, doubling in size until he is much bigger than the bird. He tosses the potion out of the window only for it to land in the bulldog's mouth. While the now giant-sized cat chases the slightly smaller canary through the side of the house, the bulldog guzzles down the formula. After a quick run around the block, the cat and canary wind up back outside of the house, where a now gigantic bulldog appears before them. The cat runs away in fear as the bulldog tosses the bottle of plant growth food down the chimney, where it rolls out of the fireplace and straight to the mouse inside the house. The dog leaps over the house and chases the cat into the city.
The mouse in the house takes a few sips of plant food, instantly ballooning to gigantic size. The dog chases the cat to the city, only for the now gargantuan mouse to show up and scare the bulldog away with a simple "Boo!". The mouse who is as tall as a 20 story building and just as fat, reminds the cat that he told him he would save his life. The cat thanks him as the mouse hands him the bottle back and waddles off. The cat, rubs his enormous belly realizing he still is hungry, sees the huge mouse stomping off and gets another idea. He suddenly drinks more of the formula and grows even bigger and fatter than the mouse. The cat who is by now 100 stories tall, chases the giant but smaller mouse through the city and across the country, passing the Grand Canyon, Hoover Dam and the mountains.
The giant mouse hides in a railroad tunnel, losing the cat for a moment. The mouse drinks the potion when the cat isn't paying attention and becomes even bigger than the already huge cat. The mouse starts to beat up on the cat only for the cat to take the potion back and drink it, becoming bigger than the mouse. The mouse takes it back and drinks more to become bigger still. They continue getting bigger and bigger, fatter and fatter until they suddenly both come to a stop at the same exact size. They shake the now empty bottle of Jumbo-Gro and tell the audience at home that they have to end the cartoon, as they've run out of the formula. They wave goodbye to the audience before the camera pulls back, revealing that they have outgrown the Earth itself and are standing atop the globe.

Tags: psychedelic

Review:
A Must-Be-Seen-To-Be-Believed Masterpiece.
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..
Absolute genius!.
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..
Pullin' out that bottle of Whup-ass.
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..
The quintessential Tex Avery cartoon..
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.
Most highly recommended..
Tex Avery's animal magic.
'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..
A king-sized delight.
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. Ten Upsmanship.
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..
KING-SIZE CANARY (Tex Avery, 1947) ****.
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?.
"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?
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..
It's Tex Avery at MGM!
What more could you want?!.
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!