Goo Goo Goliath (1954)

One of my all time favorites.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

"Goo Goo Goliath" is a 7-minute cartoon from over 60 years ago that is certainly nowhere near Warner Bros' most known works. But with such a gigantic quantity, you cannot find quality everywhere and this is unfortunately true here. Freleng, Foster, Blanc and Benederet usually stand for quality, but not even they can make this one work. It is especially the background animation that looks lackluster here and very much inferior to what Warner Bros did during that time, or even a decade ago. One reason why this cartoon is not known today anymore is probably because it does not feature any of their most known characters. And in the middle section, it almost feels as if they were trying to channel Disney's "how to" videos starring Goofy, in this case "how to be a dad". "Goo Goo Goliath" is rarely funny or creative, I give it a thumbs down.

I've always wondered what's up with the image of the drunken stork. Whatever it is, the besotted wading bird of the family Ciconiidae delivers a giant baby to a normal-sized couple, and...well, whatever your problems raising a baby are, they can't be this bad! I'm sure that "Goo Goo Goliath" was mostly a place holder (every director got to direct one or two miscellaneous cartoons each year). While not what I consider hilarious, it's easily enjoyable. Of course, you gotta pity storks. The mythical deliverers of new babies get depicted in cartoons as irresponsible alcoholics.Anyway, worth seeing.

While the drunken stork is an amusing thread running through this story of baby-swapping, there are many other memorable moments: the giant baby playing with life-size trucks, or the satire of those 1950's cautionary films with the scene of an empty yard and the narrator saying "a gatedoor carelessly left ajar, and an innocent baby wanders away..." (obviously a closed gate wouldn't have impeded the giant baby), or the giant father using a jeweler's eyepiece to see as he changes the diapers on his extremely tiny baby. Perhaps not as inventive as the classic Mars/Earth baby-swap, "Rocket-bye Baby" but still worthy.

The Stork. The Stork is only source of humor in this otherwise not funny and dry short. It's rather predictable and does not offer any real amusement. The Stork really makes you laugh but other than him, I really would not waste my time watching this.