The Eager Beaver (1946) User Reviews

god dam it

[lee_eisenberg · 8/10 · 19 January 2020]

One of Chuck Jones's one-shot cartoons is done sort of like Tex Avery's cartoons from the 1930s (i.e., Groucho Marx-style gags). Here the subject is members of the genus Castor damming a river (in two senses) while a flood approaches. One of the beavers has a Bugs Bunny voice, another has a Porky Pig voice (makes perfect sense, since Mel Blanc provides the voices). Meanwhile, there's a beaver who turns out to matter more than the others predicted.

It's not Warner Bros's greatest cartoon ever but still serves up plenty of laughs during its brief run time. It goes to show why Warner Bros's cartoons were better than Disney's: Disney cartoons were "nice" and "cute", while Warner Bros cartoons had an edge to them.

Good one.

The REAL action of this prophetic cartoon takes place in 2041 . . .

[oscaralbert · 7/10 · 27 September 2017]

. . . during the first year of the Honey Boo Boo Administration (which follows fast on the heels of the three Duck Dynasty Commanders-in-Chief). The title character of THE EAGER BEAVER is Honey Boo Boo herself, of course. It was a No-Brainer for Warner Bros.' Extreme Early Warning Crew of Animated Shorts Seers (aka, The Looney Tuners) to prognosticate that a Honey Boo Boo Presidency would become inevitable, once they foresaw that a serial finger raping Casino Bankruptist tax cheat exposed as a Red Commie KGB tool could bamboozle his way into our once-hallowed White House on the strength of hosting a perennial Emmy-losing game show. Like U.S. Czar Vlad "The Mad Russian" Putin's Washington Sock Puppet Don Juan Rump, THE EAGER BEAVER--carefully decked out to call to mind Honey Boo Boo's early pageant costumes--fails at everything it tries early on. But then when an oncoming flood (representing the over-populated Asian threat posed by Red Commie China and its stalking horse, North Korea) threatens Beaver Town's (that is, America's) very existence, Honey Boo Boo unleashes the Z Bomb (our follow-up to the A and H series nukes, of course) to plug this gap in the defenses of Fortress America's Dam against the Asian Hordes. THE EAGER BEAVER ends with this Honey Boo Boo rodent heroine being carried off by a grateful populace, shoulder-high.

A simple plot and a funny cartoon.

[rapt0r_claw-1 · 21 December 2003]

The Eager Beaver (1946) is a funny 40's cartoon, and Jones's unique style is just beginning to surface.

The use of music is excellent, as the beavers construct the dam with perfect synchronization. A good "Hard at Work" theme.

Dialog is minimal besides the narration, but I like it. It has some clever lines, like when the narrator tells the beavers to dam the river. And the annoying beaver who supervises the construction is just a set-up for the ending.

The plot is simple, but I like the story it tells. The weird tree-felling methods of those beavers never cease to amaze me. The Eager Beaver's attempts at cutting down some trees are good.

The animation is excellent, but typical of the day. It's pre-1948, so it's not exactly like what we're accustomed to.

Overall, just a funny cartoon, with some good jokes and good artistry. It entertains, which is all it needs to do.

Amusingly active despite no real characters

[bob the moo · 27 February 2004]

A wildlife documentary sets out to look at the industrious species of the beaver, looking at them at work in the forest. However one of the beavers is keen but without much ability and only serves to get in the way of the others. He gets sent to a distant tree to keep him out of the way - but little do the others know how important his role will be.

When a Warner Brothers cartoon comes on with no recognisable stars it is often a time to start to worry - but not always. Here the film barely even has a character to focus on, never mind a well known one, but it still manages to be amusing even if it is never out and out funny. The film just uses the various beavers in exaggerated ways and most of the time it made me chuckle a little bit. The second half of this short sees the keen beaver becoming the focus, but the material still looks at the wider `story'.

The characters are colourful enough and have a nice rough acerbic edge to their attitudes and it makes the film that little bit sharper compared to those cartoons with the horrible cutesy characters. Overall this is quite enjoyable without really being laugh out loud funny, but still worth watching.