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Airing Date: May 25, 1996
Jurassic Pooch
Directors: Craig McCracken & Genndy Tartakovsky
Stars: Dexter
Rating: ★★
Review:
‘Jurassic Pooch’ clearly takes its inspiration from ‘Jurassic Park’: Dexter tries to revive a dinosaur from ancient DNA trapped inside amber.
Unfortunately and rather unscientifically, he’s missing the genes for the heart and the brain, which he takes from his dog. The result is a Tyrannosaur with dog characteristics.
Compared to the other characters, the dinosaur isn’t designed very well, and looks surprisingly like standard Hanna-Barbera fare. The humor, too, mostly falls flat, as the episode milks ‘giant dog’ gags to the max. The best gag may be the one in which Dexter’s cool jet plane turns into a bicycle.
Dial M for Monkey: Orgon Grindor
Directors: Paul Rudish & Genndy Tartakovsky
Stars: Dial M for Monkey
Rating: ★
Review:
The Dial M for Monkey were the least interesting parts of the Dexter’s Laboratory show, and ‘Dial M for Monkey: Orgon Grindor’ is no exception.
In this boring episode monkey gets hypnotized by some intergalactic gypsy called Orgon Grindor. This pale-green villain looks like a blast from the past: he’s dressed like an organ grinder cliché from the 1930s, he speaks mock-Italian, and partly sings his dialogue, e.g. on the opera aria melodies of Giuseppe Verdi’s ‘La donna e mobile’ and Ruggero Leoncavallo’s ‘Ridi, Pagliacci’.
Much more interesting is the deepening of the relationship between Monkey and Agent Honeydew, who, for once, saves the day instead of Monkey. The two are depicted as being lovers in a rather risqué inter-species relationship.
Dimwit Dexter
See the post devoted to this episode
‘Jurassic Pooch/Dial M for Monkey: Orgon Grindor/Dimwit Dexter’ is available on the DVD ‘Dexter’s Laboratory Season One: All 13 Episodes’
Director: J.R. Bray
Release Date: 1915
Rating: ★★★½
‘Diplodocus’ is J.R. Bray’s own version of Winsor McCay’s ‘Gertie the Dinosaur‘ (1914), being so similar to the McCay’s success film that it’s plain plagiarism.
The film stars a Diplodocus instead of a Brontosaur and shows the differences between Bray’s and McCay’s drawing styles, with McCay showing more art nouveau elegance, and Bray displaying more comic strip like clarity.
Bray’s film reuses much of McCay’s material: like Gertie the Diplodocus lifts one foot, shifts from side to side, he gets startled by a flying dragon, interacts with a mastodon, eats a pumpkin etc. Like McCay’s film it’s clear that the film had to be shown together with a live narrator, who interacts with the drawn prehistoric animal.
The only new elements are the Diplodocus tying its neck in a knot, the arrival of a small monkey, and a sea serpent pulling at the mastodon’s trunk.
Bray’s animation is of a high quality, but his Diplodocus lacks Gertie’s personality. Thus this weak rip off only manages to show what great film ‘Gertie the Dinosaur’ was, and still is.
Watch ‘Diplodocus’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Diplodocus’ is available on the DVD & Blu-Ray-set ‘Cartoon Roots: The Bray Studios Animation Pioneers’
Director: Chuck Jones
Release Date: April 22, 1939
Rating: ★★★
Review:
After directing four films with stars of his own, fledgling director Chuck Jones first directed a major Warner Bros. Star in ‘Daffy Duck and the Dinosaur’.
Jones does a fairly good job in trying to capture the wacky spirit of contemporary cartoons by Tex Avery and Bob Clampett, although his animation is more Disney-like than that of his peers.
Daffy’s adversary is a grumpy caveman called Caspar, whose surprisingly elaborate design and voice anticipate Elmer Fudd a little. The dinosaur of the title is called Fido. He is the caveman’s pet, and a large brontosaur. However, the dinosaur hardly comes into action, and most of the comedy is between the duck and the caveman.
There are some nice gags, but highlight is the non-animated gag of an enormous string of billboards leading to a duck dinner. Jones is still uncertain with Daffy as a character, but let’s be fair, so was even Tex Avery himself at this point – and he invented the duck. Jones’s caveman in fact is a better opponent to Daffy than Avery’s Egghead was. However, only with his third Daffy Duck film, ‘My Favorite Duck‘ (1942), Jones directed the character to great comic effect.
Watch ‘Daffy Duck and the Dinosaur’ yourself and tell me what you think:
This is Daffy Duck cartoon No. 6
To the previous Daffy Duck cartoon: Daffy Duck in Hollywood
To the next Daffy Duck cartoon: Scalp Trouble
‘Daffy Duck and the Dinosaur’ is available on the DVD-set ‘Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 3’
Director: Winsor McCay
Release Date: September 14, 1914
Stars: Gertie the Dinosaur
Rating: ★★★★★ ♕
Review:
‘Gertie the Dinosaur’ was Winsor McCay’s third animation film, and it certainly is his most famous one, still capable of entertaining new audiences.
The film follows a same story idea similar to that of ‘Little Nemo‘: during a visit to a natural history museum Winsor McCay bets the famous comic strip artist George McManus that he can make a dinosaur move. After these long nine minutes of slow live action introduction, we finally see McCay’s creation: Gertie the dinosaur.
McCay’s dinosaur appears to be a girl dinosaur. She behaves like a trained animal: she listens to what McCay is telling her, she eats a rock and a whole tree, she bows to the camera, she lifts her feet, she’s being startled by a small mammoth, which she throws into the lake, she dances, and she lifts McCay himself on to her back.
The captions in between replace dialogue, which was part of a vaudeville act with Winsor McCay talking to Gertie and she listening to him. This vaudeville show, with which McCay toured, has been recreated in the Disneyland special ‘The Story of Animated Drawing‘, which aired on November 30, 1955, and which is available on the DVD set ‘Behind the Scenes at the Walt Disney Studio’. At the 2014 Annie Awards Ceremony Bill Farmer also reenacted McCay’s vaudeville performance (included below). The reenactment makes the experience of the original film much more vivid, and watching this version is highly recommended.
The short is impressive because of its fine animation, command of perspective and detailed background art (which had to be drawn over and over again), but what really makes the film a milestone of animation is that Gertie the Dinosaur is the first animated cartoon character with personality. She’s not just any dinosaur, she’s a female dinosaur, behaving half like a trained animal, half like a small spoiled child. She cries when being scolded by McCay, and is clearly happy when performing her little dance.
Watching the interaction between her and (the off-screen) McCay is impressive, but it’s also delightful and fun. ‘Gertie the Dinosaur’ had a huge impact at the time, and inspired a whole generation of animation film pioneers (e.g. Paul Terry, Frank Moser, Pat Sullivan, Otto Messmer and the Fleischer Brothers). The film truly is an all time classic, and enjoyable to this very day.
‘Gertie the Dinosaur’ was followed by the unfinished and much less successful film ‘Gertie on Tour‘, of which McCay completed only two scenes.
Watch ‘Gertie tThe Dinosaur’ yourself and tell me what you think:
Here’s the original vaudeville show reenacted by Bill Farmer at the 41st Annie Awards Ceremony (2014):
This is Winsor McCay’s third film
To Winsor McCay’s second film: How a Mosquito Operates
To Winsor McCay’s fourth film: The Sinking of the Lusitania
Dr. Grob's Animation Review 