A nesting coconut?
"Much Ado About Nutting" is a 1953 Merrie Melodies Cartoon. Directed by Chuck Jones.
A squirrel in a downtown park finds a street stand selling nuts. He makes his way to the stand to eat some of the goodies. First, he finds peanuts, before moving his way up to walnuts, then Brazil nuts, before finally gazing upon the holy grail: Coconuts! The squirrel rolls the bulky coconut home, only to find out that eating it is going to be much tougher than it looks...
The cartoon is ranked #59 on the 100 Greatest Looney Tunes list.
"Much Ado About Nutting" provides examples of:
- Determinator: The squirrel goes to any and all desperate lengths to finally break open the extremely durable coconut shell and eat his prize. It doesn't pull through in the end.
- Greed: The squirrel keeps rejecting one nut after another for a bigger one, finally settling on the coconut. And it's not even a real nut.
- Ground-Shattering Landing: Dropping the coconut from the top floor of a skyscraper only causes it to push a block of street down several feet.
- Hurt Foot Hop: The result of kicking the coconut in one of the squirrel's early attempts in breaking the coconut's shell.
- This happens immediately after the squirrel tries to break it open with a rock, only to have the rock split in half. What did he think was going to happen? Although the combination of music and the squirrel's reaction here makes it the funniest few seconds of the entire short.
- Mime and Music-Only Cartoon: No dialogue or monologue of any kind occurs throughout this cartoon.
- One-Shot Character: The unnamed squirrel.
- Pun-Based Title: To Much Ado About Nothing.
- The Reveal: What is inside the coconut shell? Another Coconut!
- "Shaggy Dog" Story: After everything the squirrel goes through, the coconut just contains another coconut. Worse, even if he did get it open properly, what's inside a coconut is definitely not your typical "nut" contents.
- Surprisingly Super-Tough Thing: Saws, axes, jackhammers, explosives, nothing can break the coconut open with even a scratch. Even dropping the damn thing off of the top of a skyscraper can't open it, as it only creates a massive crater in the street!
- Wink "Ding!": Done by the coconut at the end; but less of a ding and more of a "beawhoop".
- Yank the Dog's Chain: After all of his attempts to open the coconut fail, the weary squirrel finally gives up and takes the coconut back to the stand. But the coconut falls off the stand and cracks. The squirrel opens the cracked coconut shell to find... another coconut shell. He faints, and the coconut winks, as the short ends.
