Goo Goo Goliath (1954)

This Movie Can Only Be Described With One Word.

terrible... so disappointed.

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

. . . than the thought of having their babies swapped at birth with those of Random Strangers, Warner Bros. decided in the 1900s. Many of Warner's live-action features and animated shorts proved a barrel of laughs circling around this jocular theme. GOO GOO GOLIATH is just one of the Looney Tunes designed to instruct U.S. Citizens that Life is just a craps shoot, anyway; a dice game in which the odds of getting a particular outcome are about 100 million to one (the typical ratio of tadpoles to eggs when folks make Whoopee). Since those odds roughly covered the entire population as the Baby Boom got into full swing, it was logical to think that anyone's grandchild could be a Barack Obama just as easily as a Donald Trump. GOO GOO GOLIATH suggests that American procreation is akin to playing the slots (some sort of song might be associated with all of this, which goes "Put another nickel in, in the Nickelodeon . . . "). The moral of this story is that having U.S. babies is just like buying a box of chocolates: You just need to grin and bear it, rather than complaining about what the stork dragged in at the drop of a diaper.

"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.

Friz Freleng's domestic comedy 'Goo Goo Goliath' takes as its starting point the idea of babies delivered to the wrong parents. Although this idea had been touched on before in cartoons such as Bob Clampett's 'Baby Bottleneck', 'Goo Goo Goliath' adds the amusing touch that the mix up is due to the drunkenness of a stork who is perpetually toasted by new parents. This concept is the best thing about this rather weak cartoon and Freleng would reprise it in the Bugs Bunny cartoon 'Apes of Wrath'. 'Goo Goo Goliath' is also similar to Chuck Jones's equally odd and misfiring 'Rocket-Bye Baby' which emerged two years after 'Goo Goo Goliath'. The idea of a giant baby delivered to a normal sized couple has very limited comic potential and 'Goo Goo Goliath' struggles to make the concept work. It's not helped by the unattractive, angular style in which the cartoon is presented. Ultimately, the jokes run dry almost immediately and there is little to recommend this unusual but unappealing cartoon.

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.