Warner Brothers (consistently the studio with the best animation) produced some very funny cartoons featuring caricatures of real people ... for instance, a couple of Loony Toons starring a worm who looks and sounds like Jerry Colonna, which I laughed at when I watched them. 'Pleased to Eat You' is a one-off cartoon by Paramount -- consistently the studio with the WORST animation -- and in this cartoon the two main characters are both caricatures of real people: Jerry Colonna and Bert Lahr. Yet, watching this cartoon, rather than laughing, I felt outraged by the brazen rip-offs of these actors' personalities. Why the double standard of my reaction? Probably because the Warners toons were funny, while this one isn't.
Here we have a cartoon lion who sounds amazingly like Bert Lahr's famous portrayal of the Cowardly Lion in 'The Wizard of Oz' ... only this lion's gimmick is that he's ravenous rather than craven. He's named the Hungry Lion, which made me wonder if anyone involved in this cartoon had actually read any of the Oz books. After 'The Wizard of Oz', the next Oz novel which features the Cowardly Lion teams him with another huge feline named the Hungry Tiger: this cartoon's 'Hungry Lion' feels suspiciously like a conflation of the two. Oddly, having decided to make this cartoon's main character a rip-off of Lahr's very famous portrayal, the animators (and the voice actor) don't go to the same histrionic extremes that Lahr did; perhaps they had a failure of nerve.
The Hungry Lion hears a radio commercial by a zoo keeper who looks and sounds like a bad imitation of Jerry Colonna (voiced by someone vastly inferior to the faux Colonna at Warners), seeking animals for the Who's Who Zoo. (That name is as funny as most of the gags in this cartoon; not much.) The lion moves into the zoo, hoping to cadge free meals. Mildly amusing chaos ensues.
The one thing that most impressed me about this semi-ambitious cartoon is that some of the dialogue is in rhymed couplets. This device could have been very effective if it had been used through the entire cartoon; unfortunately, it comes and goes arbitrarily. This toon has glimmerings of being head-and-shoulders above the typical Paramount cartoon (which isn't saying much), yet ultimately isn't very funny nor innovative. My rating: 4 out of 10.