. . . in this opus from the over-rated Looney Tunes director, Tex Avery, LAND OF THE MIDNIGHT FUN. Ostensibly a parody of the ubiquitous live-action travel shorts that plagued theaters and TV like swarms of locusts from the 1930s through the 1960s, Avery's idea of a good spoof is to make the take-off more racist than its original source material. Since no one in the Lower 48 cares about the Native Americans of Alaska, MIDNIGHT was NOT consigned to its rightful place among the "Forbidden Eleven" the night that Ted Turner and Jane Fonda guzzled mint juleps and censored our American Cultural Heritage amid their Tomahawk Chopping for Ted's Atlanta Braves baseball squad. MIDNIGHT does warn America of the upcoming Exxon Valdez catastrophe, with its depiction of a recklessly drunk sea captain running aground in the fog (and permanently gumming up the Homeland of the child-like igloo builders lampooned here). Tex devotes about half the cartoon to some song Warner was trying to sell sheet music for in 1939, focusing on the lavender Panty-Clad Fanny of a First People's maiden during her implausible extended ice dance.
Review of Land of the Midnight Fun
