oscaralbert Review of You Ought to Be in Pictures

You Ought to Be in Pictures (1940)

Pinnochio is not the only character who wished to become . . .

[9/10 · 6 May 2016]

. . . more Real. From HER to EX MACHINA, film history is full of one- or two-dimensional screen personalities yearning to strut around in full 3D. (A few actually made the difficult transition, such as John Wayne, who phased from eight flicks as "Stony Brooke, the Cowboy with a Magical Horse" to a fully-functional Horse's Rear.) In Warner Bros.' animated short YOU OUGHT TO BE IN PICTURES, Daffy Duck prods Porky Pig to ask Real Life Looney Tunes Producer Leon Schlesinger, who plays himself, "What's Errol Flynn got that I Ain't got?" When this cartoon first came out, many answers to that question sprang to the tips of viewers' tongues (and not all of them were G-rated). Cartoon physics prove a tougher nut to crack than Quantum String Theory, full of brain-twisting conundrums. Though one of Porky's sneezes proves stronger than any Real Life "Achoo!", it's no problem for studio bouncers to toss the wayward porker around (car and all, when necessary). Though Daffy Duck has the versatility here of any framed portrait at Hogwarts, as of this writing there's been no word of Warner Bros. suing J.K. Rowling for copyright infringement (something that Disney certain would, in a similar position).