Native Food (1945) User Reviews

Has Its Points

[boblipton · 6/10 · 23 May 2023]

Private McGillicuddy is desperate for some variety in his diet on a South Pacific Island. Unfortunately, the native food ranges from inedible to poisonous!

After they ceased to make theatrical cartoons in the early 1940s, Harman & Ising kept busy with industrial films and, during the war, films for the Armed Forces. Here, with this short for the Navy, Harman shows some interesting technique on a short budget: black and white, and with the in-betweening reduced.

It's certainly not as full of humor and personality and the Private Snafu cartoons, but it does have Mel Blanc narrating in a sarcastic tone of voice.

I can see why Private McGillicuddy never became as famous as Private Snafu!

[planktonrules · 3/10 · 25 February 2021]

While I have long loved the Private Snafu shorts that Chuck Jones directed for the military during WWII, I had no idea that a very similar character appeared in some US Navy shorts by Hugh Harmon during the war as well. Both characters featured the voice work of Mel Blanc and the two characters look very similar...but otherwise they are quite different.

In "Native Food" the emphasis is less on humor (like Snafu) and more on education...making the short much less interesting to watch. Additionally, the frame rate is such that much of the short looks like a slide show...with limited animation. The film is about the importance of not eating native foods due to various health reasons...which is an important lesson. But the films really don't translate well to today and Snafu lovers will have a hard time loving McGillicuddy!

Private McGillicuddy is at it again!

[dtucker86 · 10/10 · 17 September 2023]

Private McGillicuddy is a screw up that would make anyone feel better about themselves by thinking "at least I am not as screwed up as he is". This training film was aimed to teach the service men about the dangers of eating foreign food and that it would be more dangerous then a Japanese war lord. The movie points out that many of the natives in the South Pacific islands used a very unique form of fertilizer in their fields! Actually watching this film brought back memories of my service in Desert Storm where I and my fellow Soldiers lived on meals ready to eat (you don't want to even know what they are) for 32 days straight.