It's weird to think in the era of streaming services and independently created content that there was ever a time that you had to hope and pray that the movie or show you wanted to watch was going to air on TV that night. Home media didn't really take off until the 1980s, so what was someone supposed to do then? Well, someone at Warner Bros decided to take some of the classic Looney Tunes segments and put them into a movie. However, this wouldn't be any old compilation movie like the Fantastic Animation Festival movie from 1977, this was going to have some semblance of a narrative. Even still, in the age of Streaming and DVD boxsets, is a movie like this worth coming back to?
Much like with the Fantasia review, there really is not much else to this movie other than a collection of shorts with a few wrap-around segments. However, unlike Fantasia, the wraparounds do give this movie somewhat of a narrative. Essentially, we drop in on Bugs Bunny, as he talks to us about his life, which are shown as various Looney Tunes shorts. These range from shorts starring his cohorts, to shorts all about him. I will talk about the segments, but not as individually as I did with Fantasia. There are a lot of shorts in this movie, and I have varying opinions about them. So, other than any new segments and the ending segment, most of the Looney Tunes shorts I'll be talking about in groups.
The first segment is, from what I can tell, an original segment about the history of chases. It's told as you'd expect a joking cartoon character to tell a joking history. It's not that funny, and is rather slow. Probably due to the fact that at this point, everyone behind the Looney Tunes was much older, although I will give credit that there may be some actual true information in this segment. See, sometime in the early 2010s, researchers discovered that when lit up in certain ways, some paintings in the Chauvet Cave would actually form the illusion of movement. So, in a sense, this segment was correct that animated pictures began on cave walls. I find that kind of amusing, but then again I am a media history nerd.
After this we get out first Looney Tunes short, "Hare-way to the Stars", this short has some cute gags, but I don't think this was the best short to start off with. Thankfully, after this we get three Daffy Duck shorts in a row, starting with "Duck Dodgers in the 24½th Century", an all time classic short, "Robin Hood Daffy", which is funny even in this shorter state, and "Duck Amuck", one of my all time favourite animated shorts. I've talked about this one before, so if you want my detailed thought on it, here's a previous post to check out.
Next are three shorts that focus on Bugs dealing with a more intimidating adversary, starting with "Bully for Bugs", a great short, but maybe not the best way to start this stretch of shorts. The rest of the three also feature Daffy, so maybe if they reversed the order of these three, it would have worked better. Our next short is "Ali Baba Bugs", which I am skipping right past because I don't want to get into a discussion over whether this short is problematic by today's standards or not. It was never one of my favourite shorts in the first place, mostly because of its ending, I never really found it that funny. Thankfully, the next short is "Rabbit Fire", which is probably my favourite Bug and Elmer short.
Our next three shorts start off on a bad foot, because it starts with "For Scent-imental Reasons", a Pepe Le Pew short. I never liked Pepe Le Pew, I never really found him to be that funny, not that there weren't some neat gags in his shorts, but the main joke was never that amusing. Next is another shortened cartoon, "Long-Haired Hare", which is still funny in this shortened form. Along this theme, the next short is the iconic "What's Opera, Doc?" one of the most recognized, beloved and remembered Looney Tune segment out there. I like it fine.
The final Bugs Bunny short is "Operation: Rabbit" which is the perfect segue into the final portion of this movie, the Road Runner shorts, which are just played as one big segment. They include a lot of the iconic moments from many of the shorts, such as the Bat-Man's Outfit from "Gee Whiz-z-z-z-z-z-z", the Earthquake Pills from "Hopalong Casualty" and a couple trampoline gags. Road Runner cartoons were always my favourite of the Looney Tunes shorts, so I do really like this big mesh of iconic and hilarious Coyote gags.
Other than all of that, there are the wraparound segments, which don't really serve to tell jokes, but more to introduce each short. All in all, these were fine, but that brings us to a very interesting point. These are the reasons you would want to watch this movie nowadays, because we can get the full version of all these shorts on multiple different DVD releases, so the question remains, are these wrap-arounds worth it? Honestly, I would say no. Though I love a lot of these shorts, a part of me just wishes I was watching the shorts separately rather than the movie. I have a couple Looney Tunes compilation DVDs, and I think I'd get just as much entertainment out of them as I did from this movie. So, how would I recommend it?
As a movie, I'd probably put it in the Slight Recommendations category. Someone might really like seeing this laid back and more casual kind of Bugs Bunny. Then again, we don't spend much time with that Bugs Bunny, we spend a lot of time with the classic shorts, and that is the movie's biggest problem. There is no need for it anymore, we can get the entire series run on DVD now. Remember, this was made before home media really took off. In a way, it's very archaic and a relic of a bygone era where we couldn't just put on our favourite episode of our favourite show with the click of a button. If you are a collector of all thing Looney Tunes, you might have this in your collection, but even then I don't think it's worth watching. Grab a compilation DVD and enjoy.
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