Barney's Hungry Cousin is a 1953 cartoon from MGM directed by Dick Lundy.
It is an installment in the Barney Bear series. Here, Barney goes to Jellystone National Park for a picnic. Unfortunately, a bear that lives in the park spots Barney's picnic food and tries various attempts to steal it, while Barney tries in vain to avoid the moocher.
Tropes:
- Beary Funny: The eponymous "hungry cousin" of Barney is a skinner, goofier-looking bear.
- Big Eater: The eponymous "hungry cousin".
- Call-Forward: The national park is called Jellystone, where a Big Eater of a bear lives. A few years later, this would be the setting of a TV show, involving another certain Big Eater of a bear, which, coincidentally, Dick Lundy also worked on.
- The Cat Came Back: No matter where Barney goes, his cousin is always right there to get his food.
- Downer Ending: Par for the course for these cartoons. In this case, his cousin gets Barney arrested for trying to feed him what's left of his picnic food. To add insult to injury, as he sits in the back of the paddy wagon, Barney tries to at least eat a lollipop he has on his person, only for it to be stolen by his cousin, who is driving the truck! Cue the iris-out.
- Furry Confusion: This short has Barney, a Funny Animal bear who wears clothes, visit a park and meet his cousin, a Civilized Animal who still acts human, but is naked and lives in the forest. What's more, there are "Don't Feed the Bears" signs everywhere, but somehow they don't apply to Barney enjoying his picnic lunch.
- Karma Houdini: And how! The cousin, despite stealing from Barney, not only gets away with taking Barney's food, but gets him arrested for feeding him. He even gets the last laugh by taking Barney's last morsel of food.
- Not the Fall That Kills You…: Barney has the cousin restrained with a straightjacket, and locked inside a phone booth nailed shut, which he then throws off a cliff. During the fall, the bear calmly removes the jacket, pries off the boards, opens the door, and at the very last moment, steps out of the booth just as it crashes into the ground. Physics dictates that the bear would still be splattered on the ground, as he would still maintain falling velocity; of course, this being a cartoon, Toon Physics is fully in effect.
- Reaching Between the Lines: At one point, Barney tries to hide from his cousin in a phone booth. Suddenly, the phone rings and he answers it — and his cousin reaches his head through the mouthpiece to eat a sandwich Barney has with him. Meanwhile, the rest of his body is in a neighboring phone booth with nothing in between!
