UnowPriceless hyped garbage

Lollivan It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Yash Wade Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

Brooklynn There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

F Gwynplaine MacIntyre Many of Tex Avery's cartoons at Warner Bros were parodies of the short subjects that (in those days) were screened during a trip to the movies before the main feature. 'The Isle of Pingo Pongo' is a parody of travelogue movies: specifically, the 'Going Places' shorts that Lowell Thomas narrated for Universal. Since modern viewers of this toon are unlikely to be familiar with the original material being parodied, a large amount of the humour is lost.There are also references in this 1938 cartoon to other cultural fixtures of that time, such as the then-popular 'Life Goes to a Party' feature in Henry Luce's weekly magazine, and the wildlife documentaries of Martin and Osa Johnson. Perceptive modern viewers will sense that something is being guyed here, but will be frustrated because they probably don't know the source material.Some of the material here is worse than it needed to be. There's a rather strained gag, depicting a ship taking a circuitous route across a map of the world from the United States to Africa. But the gag is not made funnier by the map's gross inaccuracy. Would it have hurt Leon Schlesinger's production schedule to include an accurate map of the world in that shot? This cartoon has provoked some controversy for racist content. Sure enough, we get the usual dumb jokes about African natives with pneumatic lips and bones in their topknots. I found the jokes mostly so weak that they aren't malicious, but also so weak that they aren't funny. What did offend me here was the narrator's continuous referrals to these African caricatures as 'savages' and 'aborigines'.Even some brilliant Warners toons are seriously weakened by bad running gags ending in limp finishes: a classic example of this problem is 'The Dover Boys', featuring innovative animation, a clever and unusual premise, but an incredibly bad running gag leading into a weak fade-out. Here in 'The Isle of Pingo Pongo' we seem to have one more example of that same problem, with Egghead (Tex Avery's proto-Elmer Fudd character) periodically showing up with a violin case and asking the unseen narrator 'Now, boss?'. 'Not yet!' the narrator tells him each time. I had very low expectations for a funny pay-off gag, but I was pleasantly surprised.Lowell Thomas's travelogues always ended in a deep cliché of his own creation: "And so, as the sun sinks slowly in the west, we bid a fond farewell to...". My former mother-in-law recalled for me that, as a moviegoer in the 1930s, she would hear members of the audience reciting these overly-familiar words along with Thomas's narration. In the last few seconds of its screen time, 'The Isle of Pingo Pongo' goes a considerable distance towards redeeming itself with a juicy parody of Thomas's sign-off, giving Egghead a closing gag that turns out to be surprisingly very funny indeed.Unfortunately, modern viewers who aren't familiar with the clichés being parodied here won't get the full effect of the good jokes, but WILL get the full effect of the racial stereotyping. Under the circumstances, my rating for this bad 'un is just 3 out of 10.

Lee Eisenberg One of the many racist-and-clever-at-the-same-time Looney Tunes cartoons, Tex Avery's "The Isle of Pingo Pongo" spoofs 1930s travelogues. As this comes from Tex, there's no shortage of gags (some of which also appeared in "You're an Education"). Just like in other cartoons with similarly offensive images of non-white people, the material is equally as clever as it is racist (other examples include "Johnny Smith and Poker-Huntas" and "Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs").The unofficial star of this short is none other than Elmer Fudd's prototype Egghead. When he first appeared and asked his question, I suspected that I was in for a cool finale. Maybe it wasn't quite as zany as I would have hoped for in a Tex Avery cartoon, but it was still pretty neat. I recommend the cartoon, just as long as you understand the racist content. Available on YouTube, and preceded by the Blue Ribbon reissue in place of the credits.

haildevilman Avery was getting ready to really skewer travelogues. This shows him finding his feet.This was actually banned for the musical interlude. Showing the natives doing the cakewalk then a scat version of 'Sweet Georgia Brown' probably would rub a few the wrong way. But it was done with affection. Right down to the scatting of the Fats Waller clone.Otherwise it's just a series of spot gags. Avery did spot gags well and this is no exception.The egghead character makes an appearance here too. Apparently, Egghead was a caricature of a radio comedian that never made it. Avery was a fan so that's the reason for his use. He would later morph into Elmer Fudd. (Really!) There's enough here to get a few laughs out of anyone.

MovieCriticMarvelfan This is a short by Tex Avery, in where he takes a group on a sight seeing tour around the world. This is pretty traditional of some of his cartoons with the exception that these had some racial stereotypes and some degraded examples of the white man's view of Blacks, Aborigine tribes, Japanese, etc.This is OK, it focus the attention of the wilderness of "Pingo Pongo" island by introducing us to some talking animals and birds. The mocking bird segment is pretty funny in which the bird imitates whatever the announcer says till it gets annoying.Midway you see the focus of the toon become the mocking of aborigine tribe possibly Cannibalistic by the looks of things.One funny segment has one of them being outsmarted by two deers who then take up as their dinner.Later on we see the tribe, drinking beer and singing tunes like "She'll be coming around the mountain when she comes". It doesn't seem racist but obviously we see a message about the white man trying to tame these people to his own liking as if there's something wrong with them since he already has his own bias views of the world.There's some pretty good gags though when altogether and the whole talking animals business to narrator is pretty fun. One animal is ordered to stop and then proceeds to give a small strip dance, pretty funny, then in another segment you see an elephant get gas, while the narrator ask if everything's OK.Obviously in 1938 this would have looked in appropriate nowadays there's so much crap that's shown on TV it's not funny.Good short.