Book Revue

Book Revue (later re-issued on May 19, 1951, as Book Review) is a Looney Tunes cartoon short featuring Daffy Duck, released in 1946, with a plotline that is a mixture of the plots of 1937's Speaking of the Weather, 1938's Have You Got Any Castles? and 1941's A Coy Decoy. It is directed by Bob Clampett, written by Warren Foster and scored by Carl Stalling. The Characters' voices were provided by Mel Blanc, Sara Berner, Bea Benaderet, and Richard Bickenbach, who were uncredited. As originally released, the title is a pun, as a "revue" is a variety show, while a "review" is an evaluation of a work (this pun is not retained in the reissue).

Plot

The cartoon starts out in the same, pastoral "after midnight at a closed bookstore" fashion of Frank Tashlin's trio of "books coming to life" cartoons, to the strains of Moonlight Sonata. A colorized version of the storefront from A Coy Decoy can be seen. Inside, an inebriated "cuckoo bird" pops out of a cuckoo clock to announce the arrival of midnight (and signaling the "cuckoo" activities to follow) and the books come alive. The cartoon's first lampoon and pun appears, a book collection called "Complete works of Shakespeare". Shakespeare is shown in silhouette while his literally-rendered "works" are clockwork mechanisms, along with old-fashioned "stop" and "go" traffic signals, set to the "ninety years without slumbering, tick-tock, tick-tock" portion of "My Grandfather's Clock".