User Reviews

There were quite a few reasons for wanting to re-watch 'Pleased to Eat You'. One of the main reasons being my lifelong love of animation, of all styles and decades as well as most studios, which is never going to go away. Also re-watched it for completest sake, having liked a fair bit of Famous Studios' output even if it is uneven, which is obvious in the long running Noveltoons series. Not easy resisting anything set in a zoo, a setting of great nostalgia to me, either.

As a child, 'Pleased to Eat You' struck me as a nice enough if rather unexceptional cartoon that is a little forgettable after a few days. As a young adult, my feelings are pretty much the same, something that has been true of other 50s Noveltoons and Famous Studios cartoons too. Do agree that it is an example of a cartoon that starts off well but peters out too early, a big danger with one joke cartoons which 'Pleased to Eat You' essentially is. As far as Noveltoons cartoons go, this is middling.

Certainly there are things that are done right. The best assets being the animation and the music. Something that was not uncommon for the Famous Studios cartoons, the music especially was outstanding throughout their output and the animation quality was mostly consistent (in a good way) until the late-50s. The animation has a lot of vibrancy and atmosphere and the drawing is suitably fluid but it is the attention to detail in the backgrounds that is particularly impressive in this regard. Even better is the music. Just love its energy, the beautiful and not sugary orchestration and how it adds so much and even enhances the action.

Moments of amusement and charm can be seen in the first half, with the cartoon starting off with good promise. The lion is an engaging lead character and Jerry Colonna being caricatured is always fun. The voice acting is fine.

Sadly, too many big components aren't so fine. The second half isn't anywhere near as strong and becomes tired and repetitive. The story is paper thin and predictable, really struggling with sustaining momentum and content in the second half. 'Pleased to Eat You' actually could have been two minutes shorter easily. The gags, in what is essentially a one-joke cartoon, are too few and are only mildly amusing.

Pacing could have been tighter and the supporting characters are pretty forgettable.

Watchable overall but also not particularly good. 5/10.

Warner Brothers (consistently the studio with the best animation) produced some very funny cartoons featuring caricatures of real people ... for instance, a couple of Loony Toons starring a worm who looks and sounds like Jerry Colonna, which I laughed at when I watched them. 'Pleased to Eat You' is a one-off cartoon by Paramount -- consistently the studio with the WORST animation -- and in this cartoon the two main characters are both caricatures of real people: Jerry Colonna and Bert Lahr. Yet, watching this cartoon, rather than laughing, I felt outraged by the brazen rip-offs of these actors' personalities. Why the double standard of my reaction? Probably because the Warners toons were funny, while this one isn't.

Here we have a cartoon lion who sounds amazingly like Bert Lahr's famous portrayal of the Cowardly Lion in 'The Wizard of Oz' ... only this lion's gimmick is that he's ravenous rather than craven. He's named the Hungry Lion, which made me wonder if anyone involved in this cartoon had actually read any of the Oz books. After 'The Wizard of Oz', the next Oz novel which features the Cowardly Lion teams him with another huge feline named the Hungry Tiger: this cartoon's 'Hungry Lion' feels suspiciously like a conflation of the two. Oddly, having decided to make this cartoon's main character a rip-off of Lahr's very famous portrayal, the animators (and the voice actor) don't go to the same histrionic extremes that Lahr did; perhaps they had a failure of nerve.

The Hungry Lion hears a radio commercial by a zoo keeper who looks and sounds like a bad imitation of Jerry Colonna (voiced by someone vastly inferior to the faux Colonna at Warners), seeking animals for the Who's Who Zoo. (That name is as funny as most of the gags in this cartoon; not much.) The lion moves into the zoo, hoping to cadge free meals. Mildly amusing chaos ensues.

The one thing that most impressed me about this semi-ambitious cartoon is that some of the dialogue is in rhymed couplets. This device could have been very effective if it had been used through the entire cartoon; unfortunately, it comes and goes arbitrarily. This toon has glimmerings of being head-and-shoulders above the typical Paramount cartoon (which isn't saying much), yet ultimately isn't very funny nor innovative. My rating: 4 out of 10.

A lion who cannot get a square meal in the jungle takes the offer of three square meals a day at the zoo, but they don't deliver as promised.

Famous Studios is still spending money on the art side of their cartoons, and the number of gags proceeds at a good pace, making this a good cartoon. True, a lot of the gags will be unfamiliar to modern audiences, like the hunter being voiced like Jerry Colonna, and there is one involving pygmies with bones in their hair that modern audiences will find offensive -- which, undoubtedly, is why this one escaped my viewing until now -- but for the moment, this non-series cartoon provides fun.