phantom_tollbooth Review of Daffy Duck in Hollywood

Daffy Duck in Hollywood (1938)

A below par display from both Daffy Duck and Tex Avery

[3/10 · 3 November 2008]

Tex Avery's 'Daffy Duck in Hollywood' was Daffy's fifth cartoon and his lunacy was still borderline psychotic at this stage. He terrorises a movie director for no good reason other than it's fun. Or that's the idea anyway. 'Daffy Duck in Hollywood' is actually a largely weak effort in which Daffy's heckling is severely off-form and amounts to little more than popping up at inopportune moments or in unexpected places. He has a couple of funny lines and a great bit in which he paints the name of Warner Bros. in the air with smoke, confiding in the audience "Just giving my bosses a plug, I've got an option coming up". For the most part, however, Daffy is more annoying than entertaining and it's rare for me (a raving Daffy Duck nut) to have such a reaction to my little black hero. Another problem is the character of the director who proves to be an unsuitable foil for Daffy since he barely reacts to the duck's provocation, simply going on with his attempts to direct. His sole character trait is a tendency to roll his R's and Avery takes this foible to ludicrous extremes, turning a potentially unfunny gag into something that raises a laugh just through sheer persistence and over-exaggeration. The main notable feature of 'Daffy Duck in Hollywood' is the live action sequence at the end, a movie created when Daffy stitches together various bits of stock footage from the archives. It's a potentially great idea that falls flat thanks to poorly chosen snippets and mistiming. All in all then, 'Daffy Duck in Hollywood' is not a great cartoon and certainly isn't representative of the enormous talents of Tex Avery or the consistent charm of Daffy Duck.