A Day at the Zoo Review

A Day at the Zoo is a 1939 animated short film from the Merry Melodies series. It is a very funny short.

Finally after a string of lackluster entries, here comes one of the better Merry Melodies from the entire decade – A Day at the Zoo. So we follow a bunch of animals at the zoo and the narrator explains who they are. The film is basically a gag-cartoon meaning that it entirely consists of gags which center around animal puns and funny voices.

Definitely not everything worked and some scenes weren’t funny at all. There were just too many animals here. Also the animation is nothing to be excited about, but the score is fine. To me the narrator did an excellent job and of course the ending with Egghead being eaten by that lion is great. However, the highlight for me includes the Capuchin sequence. An old woman gives him food and he gets angry, points at the sign which says do not feed the monkey and yells – “Hey, sister, can’cha read?!” The delivery of that joke is awesome and it truly is one of the best jokes from this period of Warner’s cartoons.

A Day at the Zoo is a very funny film with a bunch of memorable and some even hilarious animal gags.