Rating: 5/7

Though the gags, story, designs, and some such aren't worth this much, I added an extra point for the animation's disturbingly focused and dedicated interlocking to the music. When the music quietens, the pigs pause. When the music speeds up, the pigs build their houses at a fantastic rate. When the tempo fluctuates, the pigs alternately slow and speed up. Each new verse introduces a new scene. You get the idea.

I'm not all that crazy about yet another adaption of The Three Little Pigs (I don't think even Clampett could make a Coal Black out of it) but in addition to the usual running around the material is packed with off-screen assaults, Gypsy disguises, sad violins, a record player attached to the wolf's butt, and a mouth wash joke. Some more gags like these would have made me enjoy the picture more, but most of it is spent moving the pigs around.

The set-up is a swipe of Fantasia using a conductor wolf to introduce the cartoon, which is of course similar to Corny Concerto but works just as well. The animation is incredibly smooth with lots of different movements in the same scene, including the wolf's Russian dance, the pigs' frollicking with a fiddle, and the various walk and run cycles. This is definately better if you watch it for the musical timing more than the actual footage.

Rating:

Rating: 5/7

It's a cartoon about an Italian worm going underwater. He was funnier in Wacky Worm, but has a few good scenes where he tests the water and swaps fish on the hook by sudden smear animation. I zone out during the chases but the wind blocks are nice.

Rating: 4/7

Not as creative as Chuck Jones' take a decade later - It's mainly proof that Bugs can act like a smart alec even around dumbasses who are 20 x his size. There are also too few memorable moments. Bugs' witty ploys take up most of the action, and it feels prefunctory. What the heck could be funny about lighting a giant's hair on fire? Chuck got it right years later when he had Bugs and Daffy run through either side of Elmer's head and crawling out his cigarette. Friz just isn't willing to go beyond a predictable "ear drum" joke.

It wouldn't be fair of me to totally lambast the cartoon, because a few moments stand out as rewarding. The giant is actually dumb enough to wait for Bugs at one point when he promises to come right back, and it's only funnier when the giant realizes he's been fooled. Their attempt at having a shoot-out also stands out by demonstrating how small the world really is.

Chuck's cartoon makes this totally redundant, but if you can't get enough of Bugs' personality you might have a blast anyway.

Rating: 5/7

It's like a b&w Bob Clampett Looney Tune colorized and presented as a full-blown Merrie Melody (which had more lavish production values until the LT Hep Cat). Except this doesn't have the "can do anything" spirit of a Bob Clampett cartoon, instead it has the "can do this and nothing else" spirit.

There are parts I certainly enjoy watching, but it's too repetitve on the whole for me to get a big kick out of it. Some of the fun comes from Daffy's obnoxious personality (now we're dealing with a Daffy who's not zany or mean but still persistant and ignorant) which leads him to demonstrate his "talents" for Porky when in fact he's there as a talent agent for someone else.

Funny moments include Daffy singing "I'm just wild about Harry", his manipulative act of putting Porky's hat and coat back on the rack, and the ultimate payoff of Daffy's client showin' his stuff (it's like One Froggy Evening in reverse).

Rating: 6/7

I read an interview with Robert McKimson's son where he said his least favorite cartoons where the ones that didn't have the famous WB characters. That's a shame, because some of the best WB cartoons don't. Sylvester and Tweety serve the purpose of comic strip characters who are supposed to deliver the same routine day-in and day-out but this brings an element of intrigue not found in their cartoons. Instead of chasing each other, the dog and cat try to frame each other for the very things their master, a Granny prototype, warns them against doing.

Though the dog and cat don't look as idiosyncratic as Sylvester and Spike, they're still really well-designed, the cat's sickly-purple fur, flat face, and narrow eyes perfect for conveying suspicion, anger, and innocence (when he starts smacking the dog and Granny shouts at him, the way he daintily picks off a pretend flea just kills me). They look so pathetic when kissing Granny's feet and make great sour faces when ordered to kiss and make-up.

While Granny's asleep, both pets commit acts of destruction to blame the other, like placing wind-up mice in the kitchen the cat has to collect with such acrobatic grace he can extend his leg to get the very last mouse before Granny sees. The dog brings a lot of tension to the film by narrowly averting his own disaster when she comes into the living room, only not seeing the dirt prints because of a desperate gamble.

Just when it looks as though the dog and cat can wage their war in peace, a third party who happens to suffer because of them devises a brilliant scheme to take revenge...that sorta backfires on him.

Rating: 5/7

One word: Schuuuuuuuuuuultz!!!

Rating: 6/7

Too inconsistent to be Friz's best, but it does contains some of the best gags he ever used, some of the best gags I’ve ever seen, in fact, and for somebody unwilling to seriously mangle his characters or distort the space-time continuum to achieve a laugh that’s no mean feat. It’s all about the attitude, really. I don’t know if the short-cut gag was meant to exaggerate LRRH’s stupidity or display the wolf’s cunning or be an ultra-sarcastic visual, but it manages to do all three and more. In order to describe how in taking the scenic route LRRH hands us one of the best gags in a cartoon ever I’d have to describe every frame involved and the personality of LRRH and I just can’t do that.

I’m also hard-pressed to explain why it’s so funny that the wolf finds a little competition in grandma’s house. He may have disagreed with Tex Avery on how to handle his gags and situations, but it is here that Friz invokes the unexpected size comparison Avery liked so much. Sadly, it’s not a very consistent cartoon, and the rest of the gags generally lack the punch of the openers. The LRRH running gag became funnier as I watched it more, but even this is most effective during the first instance when LRRH pesters the wolf twice in a row and pauses during the second time. The other instances have lamer material.

If I had to squeeze out a few more good gags, I could select Bugs and the wolf mimicking each other and the ending gag where Bugs piles a ton of stuff on the wolf as he hangs onto some furniture for dear life. They don’t match up to the first few minutes but they’re good. The gags that don’t do it for me turn out to be the door ones and the shots of Bugs pointing at things and whistling, which look as though they were squeezed in to keep the action going. Nevertheless, the high points ensure this a solid 13.

Rating: 5/7

A fly tries to stay ahead of the good-natured, hungry spider voiced by Tex Avery, whose glee only heightens with every set-back. The fly's trapeeze imitations are an example of how Friz uses the air around the character as negative space for a very orderly, step-by-step, yet funny-looking motion. There aren't very many gags in here aside from the spider's commentary and his laugh, which often has me laughing with him, but what's here is funny, primarily the fly's disguise as a wedding cake figure and the spider's sneaking up on him. At one point the fly goes inside an electrical system and reenacts Lights Fantastic. In the end, the spider makes a sudden, surreal trip to Washington.

Rating: 4/7

This is one of the most notorious cartoons banned from syndication and official home release, so offensive whole laserdisc and VHS boxsets (i.e. The Golden Age vol. 1) were recalled so it could be swapped for a different Bugs cartoon. Needless to say it will never air on Cartoon Network in a million years, so if you’re going to purchase The Golden Age of Looney Tunes vol. 1, make certain this is on it.

If you can’t find it however, don’t lose any sleep. The censors had a point for once – the Japanese caricatures are offensive and unhumorous. Inspite of that, some of it can be enjoyed 'ironically' - The Good Rumor scene is funny if only for the eyebrow-raiser of Bugs using "slant-eyes" and "monkey face", plus the Japanese coming back for more is hilarious.

When a gag relies entirely on the caricature itself, however, it’s just plain offensive. Few things genuinely annoy me but the scenes where the Japanese endlessly patter in imitation "Engrish" irritates to no end. Some of the gags try too hard to be far out and don’t do anything for me – The scene where Bugs plays around with the Sumo Wrestler is, er, kinda curious, and it’s well-timed, but it never made me laugh and probably never will.

A matter of fact, some of the gags in here try to emulate Tex Avery! (This is a strange cartoon indeed.) There’s this self-referential gag where the Japanese solider is abused by “General Tojo” and he literally realizes it’s Bugs Bunny (The gag is so good I can even forgive the broken dialect), which leads to the solider imitating Bugs as a taunt while the Merry-Go Round Broke-Down theme plays in the background. And the gag at the very end has nothing to do with the main plot but has Bugs howling like the Tex Avery wolf while chasing after a girl rabbit! Pretty cool, actually.

The infamous banned cartoon turns out to be a mix of good and bad elements. Ultimately though it’s just an excuse to poke fun at the Japanese, and I hope all involved with the cartoon realized they made a mistake somewhere down the line.

Rating: 6/7

The plot for this one is almost identical to My Favorite Duck. It can’t compete with that potpourri of in-your-face gimmicks, but it manages to be highly entertaining while using more traditional means to deliver its slapstick.

This cartoon made me realize how easy it is to overlook the brilliance of the animation in Freleng’s unit – it may not jump out at you like Robert Clampett’s or Chuck Jones’ but pay attention to Porky shaking when he fires Daffy into the air, for instance, which can shake your senses if you really pay attention to it. Little nuances like this make Freleng’s cartoons so consistently enjoyable. There’s also things like Porky running towards the water and hurling back abit when he sees Daffy, which can give me an adrenaline rush sometimes.

None of the gags in here are brilliant (at least none of them approach the out-of-control mayhem of MFD) but there’s not a single letdown in the bunch. Well, Daffy trying to convince Porky he’s an eagle has never done anything for me (I’d like a bit more than the standard reverse-psychology bit), but Daffy’s display of his many “talents” can be a hoot, especially when he does that crazy tap-dance where he shakes his legs in mid-air. The underwater gag is also real nice – it may be more conventional-looking but don’t take Daffy’s disguise routine for granted, especially since he manages to fool Porky here for some reason (I love how Porky can go from smart to stupid like that).

Hey, Freleng’s cartoons make look more generic than the other WB cartoons, but they aren’t, really, they’re simply more humble in their presentation. He could never make a cartoon as good as Coal Black but at least we can go to Friz for straightforward, solid cartoons when we need a break from the non-stop barrage of insanity from Jones, Clampett and Tashlin but don’t want something flaccid and lukewarm like McKimson or McCabe or…Lovy.

Rating:

Rating: 5/7

Bugs' wise-guy wit is all over this, feigning unconsciousness to get in an old lady's house and constantly battling with Sylvester (a curiously named dog) for sole rights to the fire place. The gags are all basically schemes to get the other guy outside, to get back inside, and several taunts. My favorites include Bugs' assault speech and his snowman disguise. I like it how both of them are thrown out by the other guy after following their conscience.

Rating:

Rating: 5/7

Just a personal preference: Making Bugs Bunny into a celebrity within the cartoon always rubbed me the wrong way with its self-consciousness. This and others where Bugs appears on broadway, stars in movies/gameshows, etc really have to work to win me over. I take a middle view with this one. Bugs and Elmer's Lenny-esque fits, the bit where Elmer recites "Romeo and Juliet" and the Sheriff watching this very cartoon in the theatre are the most entertaining parts. Conversely I think Elmer's fishing for the wabbit is too silly for its own good and Bugs is so anxious to gloat at the audience I barely laugh when he runs into Elmer's gun. And unless the mere site of Bugs tap-dancing is funny to you, I don't see how anyone could not be irritated when Elmer forces him to do it over and over at gun point. At least the piano solo makes up for it.

Rating: 5/7

The cartoon Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips should have been. It makes more sense to make fun of the Germans this way, because they actually behaved like this (Goering really was a buffoon. A buffoon who killed millions of people, but a buffoon all the same). The Japanese caricatures with buck-teeth and chimpanzee eyes were just generic racism. I happen to be fond of the Japanese language and there's no basis for the irritating jibber-jabber, while Bugs' mockery of the German speech pattern (okay, the Nazi speech pattern) makes total sense ("unsaurkrautenundelicantessen!").

Yeah, but anyhow, if you think of this as just another Bugs hunting cartoon with Goering as Elmer Fudd (which it really is), there's nothing wrong with it at all. Goering's walk cycles are some of the best with his arms gracefully shagging back and forth as he stomps on the ground (I tell ya, it's always worth the effort to animate fat guys like this) and his slow-witted reactions to Bugs' usual fake-outs are a hoot. Of course, nothing can top his sudden anger at his "Fuhrer" and his subsequent attempt to kiss up to him (Bugs in disguise, natch).

Other gags worthy of note include Bugs' "foist wrong toin at Albuqoique", the viking romance that would be repeated in What's Opera Doc?, and a disguise Bugs employs at the end to scare both Goering and Hitler. Yes, my tobacco tastes different lately.

Rating: 6/7

Sylvester's first cartoon ain't as good as Tweety Pie, but it's significant for bringing his design to the screen - He looks like a cat and yet not realistically as in earlier cartoons such as The Cat's Tale and Cagey Canary, and though his nose looks like that of a clown it's offset with a squashed area around the eyes that can go from calm to surprised to sinister to trance-like. A masterpiece of designing.

It's the perfect face for his panicky tirades about survival or saliva-spitting as it lends itself to contortion without flailing wildly. And this is exploited to the fullest aside from a few repetitive jaunts through the scenery when the suicidal robin tortures the cat by trying to get himself eaten. The robin's suicide fantasies look decidedly morbid in chalk as he sulks about, and his meekness compliments Sylvester's agitation and paranoia, especially when he's showing pictures of various delicacies to the cat whose body gets skinnier with every frame.

Rating: 5/7

This here’s Yosemite Sam’s first appearance, and apparently he’s a Michael Maltese creation, not Friz Freleng’s, which doesn’t surprise me too much. Anyway there’s been about a bajillion cartoons with this guy in them but since he’s one of my favorite WB characters I don’t mind. His brash personality makes him a better contrast for Bugs’ cool-headedness than Fudd, if you ask me.

But the personality doesn’t matter as much as the action, and parts of the cartoon are a little boring. The whole sequence where Bugs and Sam fire at each other from passenger seats really doesn’t have anything to it, and the follow-up scene where Bugs fakes Sam’s death isn’t the most creative phony death I’ve ever witnessed. These scenes don’t necessarily subtract points but they sure don’t make me want to add any.

On the other hand, Sam’s introduction is real neat (he looks threatening until you’re given an indication of his size…) and his first meeting with Bugs is funny because of, among other things, his ridiculous speech pattern. The scenes where they chase each other outside the train are more exciting due to the heightened danger, and also due to the gags which make use of the live-action footage behind one of doors.

The ending is really lame, however. I guess having Bugs fall to his death and then being saved through some Deus Ex Machina narrative was supposed to be an experiment but it comes off as a bad joke and a really dumb non-sequitur. But since I don’t want to end this review on a negative note, the brawl between Bugs and Sam before that happens is really well-animated.

Rating: 5/7

Daffy meets a little, short-tempered, yellow duck crying over the contents of his briefcase. Curious, he tries to help the duck only to get blown off. A meek, dot-eyed hunter comes for both of them and suddenly enters a state of compassion when he sees the little duck crying, and he too gets blown off. The whole cartoon is spent having Daffy run from the hunter and getting blown off by the little duck who also makes the hunter forget he's hunting.

This features a couple of rare looks at Daffy's considerate side, and stacks him against someone more unruly than he is. He does good spots like his display of indignation while the hunter sizes him up and his imitation of a little kid with a sailor hat. The yellow duck is full of quips ("awww...go peddle yer papers!") and seems to function only to intrigue and frustrate both of them. The mystery behind his suitcase adds a surreal touch.

Rating: 6/7

This establishes the repetitive plot structure of the later Sylvester and Tweety cartoons: Sylvester yearns for the bird, schemes for the bird, and recoils when each scheme backfires. Instead of refined, streamlined, and using Tweety, this entry is bulby, dirty, and uses an "innocent" woodpecker who is nevertheless very savvy at self-defense, but doesn't seem to get off on it like the pink Tweety until he tries to trick Sylvester into shooting himself. This prototype is better than its offspring because a) It has no dialogue whatsoever and you hardly notice; b) It seems to somehow cram in more laugh-out-loud moments and even takes the time for an interlude where the cat goes to sleep dreaming about the dead bird; and c) Sylvester's expressions for the camera.

When Sylvester hangs off the limb, the bird pecks a dotted line into the edge of the branch to taunt the puddy tat before cutting it off. His cringing as the branch hangs lower and lower gears you up for that little wave bye-bye before falling. His insincere expression of gratitude at the bird for not pulling the power switch and frantic leg-raising to the other end of the wire stops abruptly at Sylvester's electrocution into several shapes before falling down, making a clang sound. Sylvester runs to catch the tree he chops down because he forgets that he'd at least have a chance of remaining intact by running from the dog.

For a cartoon that has the characters doing essentially the same thing over again after each fadeout, it gives the illusion of culminating by making each gag slightly more exciting than the last, as in the dynamite sequence with these false starts and stops for the dynamite and the surprise waiting for Sylvester when he leaps into hiding. The middle interlude deviates from the formula without disrupting the flow by having Sylvester going back to bed while the woodpecker dresses up as a ghost...And he just hands him the gun!

Rating: 5/7

Bugs is challenged to game of baseball with no rules against cigar-chomping galoots (The Gashouse Gorillas) after insulting their technique, which includes tree trunks carved into bats, jumping the umpire and stealing his uniform, doing a conga line around the bases, and lining up in a row to miss batting the same slow ball. Their previous competition, a bunch of hapless old geezers, politely submits to all their acts of agressiveness until Bugs replaces them by playing every position (as the announcer announces really fast).

Friz's normal character animation tries to branch out into Scribner-like silly putty with some of the Gorilla's stances and poses and Bugs' wind-ups that include extra bursts of motion. Hey, I also like the way Bugs' eyes roll around after they hand him the equipment. Did I ever tell you I hate writing about sports cartoons?

Rating:

Rating: 5/7

Not to be confused with Daffy Duck in Hollywood ;).

Although done with Freleng's unit, I've learned on the Toonzone TTTP forum that Arthur Davis actually directed this one as a tryout, which would explain why there's no direction credit. Nevertheless, it was done with Freleng's unit, and it's closer to his style despite an instance or two of the disjointed cutting found in Davis' films.

As Freleng likes to do, there's an incidental gag having nothing to do with the main plot that nonetheless gives you something to look at while establishing the setting...a pack of ordinary wolves howling at "Hollywood and Vine". The plot is simply Daffy trying to get past a gate cop at "Warmer Brothers" so he can meet the stars. The gate cop is based on that paranoid fellow from Birth of a Notion and Hollywood Canine Canteen ("ya crazy!") but has a goofy brow mustache like Chaplain (or that Austrian fellow), a doorknob for a nose and round, scowling eyes. He looks damn funny when scattering his arms and legs around, adjusting his posture, and sounds absolutely crazy when yelling at Daffy in his thin, high voice.

Early on the gags have Daffy strutting past the gate either harboring an attitude or walking through the same frame over and over in disguise. He gets thrown at a mailbox where he hobbles around and mails a letter in a stupor. There are some thoughtful celebrity caricatures (Jimmy Durante shoulda stayed away from Anne Sheridian's dressing room) and a few funny gags where Daffy uses the scenery to befuddle the guard. In the end, it loses me by getting a little more obvious (Daffy telling thin air to "BE QUIET!") but still an entertaining romp.

Rating: 5/7

A swarm of wasps conspire to sting some fat guy in an arm chair, fortified with bug repellant and protected by a cage-like fence. They form a battalion and discipline themselves through a rigorous obstacle course including bug repellant, fly paper, and mechanical swatters as well as target practice against dummy meat. It's one of those cartoons where a few endearing fellows stand out against a sea of incognitos - The rejected wasp, the one with the swiss-knife for a stinger, and the inbred with a bad sense of direction. The processes of preparing and waging a battle are well-dramatized with officer meetings and risky missions to photograph the fat guy. The next best thing to being in the army. Aside from Battlezone.

Rating: 5/7

Given the retarded nature of cartoon syndication ("Hey, let's sell the inferior 50's and 60's cartoons to the networks and slap the earlier stuff on Nickelodeon, then Cartoon Network, then Boomerang...") an average schmuck like yours truly probably saw The Unmentionables and that one where Sylvester "rescues" Tweety well before the first appearence of midget gangster Rocky. Here he's a tall Eddie G. Robinson caricature accompanied by a Peter Lorre knock-off.

Anyway, I don't have a whole lot special to say about this one. Bugs comes up with one routine after another to insult his opponent's intelligence (or expose his lack thereof), and Rocky blurts out all kinds of threats and pleas while Bugs helps get dressed and hide from the cops and things like that, literally asking him to put on his tie while threatening to blow him away. Then Bugs runs to and fro, doing all sorts of voices to scare Rocky who comes running to the rabbit for help, until finally he has to run away from Bugs. And Peter Lorre does that creepy "ehhhh" laugh.

Rating: 5/7

Bugs does all kinds of crazy stunts on a pi-ana, from tip-toeing across the keys on all fours with a smug smile to picking up and dropping them and pulls out classical piece after classical piece with lots of zany arm and leg animation, not to mention stressed out facial expressions. Some mouse comes along and shows him up. It's more of a musical than a comedy but if you've ever wanted to see some cartoon gags synced to a sucession of classical music, here's your chance.

Rating: 5/7

Ah yes, 'The Gay 90's', IIIII get it. We have people dressed up like they're at the world's fair, even the ants are hunching backward and galloping their legs into the air. Most of it is focused on the ants invading a picnic, playing with the food and staging bizarre shows such as Russian dancing with olives for fur hats. Some of them x-dress by stuffing their grass skirts with grapes. One climbs a pile of ice cream like it was Mt. Everest. As you can expect from a Friz cartoon, the incidental gags are top notch.

Rating: 6/7

One of the most overdone WB plots, alongside the Road Runner and the Giant Mouse, but it’s alright since Friz kept it fresh with new ideas. Tweety Pie was the first WB cartoon to win an Oscar, and although it wouldn’t be my first selection, it’s more than justified since it brought a lot of new things into cartoons, or rather, it took a lot of old things and made them new again.

The cat-and-bird set-up has been used repeatedly, but Sylvester and Tweety had idiosyncratic designs and personalities that hadn’t been used with cartoon characters yet – a cartoon of this type in 1939 would have made the cat more realistic looking, more one-dimensional, and more unsympathetic. It might be due to the design, but when I watch Sylvester cartoons I can feel his primal need to get the bird, and that’s not just because cats are supposed to chase birds. Tweety gets an overhaul from Bob Clampett’s version – now he’s yellow, fatter, innocent-looking and friendly, and he’s still quick to viowence when threatened – but this new Tweety doesn’t go too far like his pink incarnation did, only counterattacking to keep Sylvester off his back, and at times I even think his sympathy for the Puddy Tat is genuine, unlike the ultra-sarcastic Pink Tweety. It’s useless to say which I prefer because they are both superbly handled and I still believe a cartoon’s quality is more dependent on the handling of the material than what the character’s personality is. But anyway…

A noticeable difference between the Tweeties is that Clampett’s Tweety was more aggressive, while the yellow Tweety only acts in self-defense, and rarely hurts the Puddy Tat when he's down. After their initial encounter in the snow Sylvester’s owner shows up to rescue Tweety and condemn Sylvester, and key poses are used to establish the tension between the two as Sylvester cowers from his owner while stealing glances at Tweety, and Tweety poses daintily for his new owner while quickly smirking at Sylvester.

The film does get a little repetitive (well, most cartoons like this do) but each sequence weaves a few escalations together to keep your interest. The second time Sylvester falls after stacking a bunch of furniture to reach Tweety he doesn’t even bother to put everything away before running to the rug to play innocent, his owner gets more and more malicious each time she catches the cat going after Tweety, and Tweety is always one step ahead of Sylvester, either away from his cage before Sylvester can get there or ready with all kinds of props to thwart the Puddy Tat. And some of the material is exotically staged – Sylvester falls from the roof shown from the inside, for instance, and even without the sound you could tell somebody is falling from outside that ceiling, and his sinister tip-toeing through the yard is also a hoot.

Rating: 5/7

A handful of compilations, including the Golden Age vol. 1, place Tortoise Beats Hare, Wins By a Hare, and Rabbit Transit consecutively. With the first two it makes sense, but I think Rabbit Transit should be placed far, far away as it pales in comparison to TWBAH and leaves a bad taste in my mouth due to reusing the plot.

It's not really fair to make this comparison, though, since it essentially takes the focus off the characters and puts it on the quirks of the race (read: they way they cheat). Bugs' outrage after reading The Tortoise and the Hare is entertaining in how he uses his body language against the turtle and increasingly sounds angry only to culminate in a gentle, friendly challenge, even if it's not of the same caliber as his spitfire flinging from the other cartoon. The turtle's slow, often arrogant quips are also funny, contrasting his retarded voice with his cool, calm, collective demeanor and shrewd cunning. Some of the "things coming out of nowhere gags" are also quite funny. It's a pretty normal cartoon, however. No significant embellishments or anything like that.

Rating: 5/7

It starts off with Bugs as a star being interviewed by a gossip columnist, but rather than chronicle his rise to stardom he talks about his early life tap-dancing on the street and his encounter with a gang of thuggish dogs. It's fun to watch Bugs tap dance through the street and the shot of him as a baby is priceless.

Then it develops into a chase cartoon with a few pause scenes to let the dogs do funny things. I like how the close-up shot goes between the bulldog and the scrawny one while they size up the rabbit and decide to pile on him. And just because Bugs is always one step ahead of the game, he gets to mock their cry of "dog pile on da rabbit!"

The New York scenery is put to use as Bugs runs from the bulldog, hides in an electronic cigarette ad ripped out of Lights Fantastic and the bulldog falls through several layers of clothes lines, coming out in different dresses with an appropriate take. In a slightly unpredictable twist he goes into a self-deprecating stupor instead of imitating a baby when he falls in the carriage. The "last gasp" animation when he falls off the roof is quite a rush.

Rating: 5/7

Daffy is pitted against two Yosemite Sam look-a-likes whose only personality is a driving need for food. To be honest, I've seen too many cartoons whose plot involves someone starving in a log cabin, and this don't change the bland forumla too much by using it for a bunch of segmented chase scenes. The big highlights are Daffy's iris when he realizes he's selling a book on how to cook ducks, the Sam accidentally roasting the other one, and Daffy's feathers falling back on his bathing suit-adorned carcass.

A good incidental gag at the start is a mousetrap baited with a photo of cheese and the figure of the desperate mouse that eats it (Please don't tell me I'm contradicting myself because I know I hated the same figure when it was used in a R&S cartoon, but it doesn't look gruesome here).

Rating: 5/7

Best ever roasting of Hollywood actors. I love the beginning gags that have this guy sucked in a straw bobbing up and down and all the people gathered on the dancefloor clustered together, bobbing up and down collectively before dispersing, not to mention what got them on the floor in the first place.

What I actually like is how Bugs and Elmer use the scenery for some outrageous moves against each other, relegating the celebrity caricatures to the background. At one point, Elmer and Bugs race off screen to reappear in a sortie with Bugs disguised as Groucho Marx and Elmer showing out of nowhere to dash his cigar. I'm also fond of Bugs' dancing because he's dancing to a dark drum rhythm instead of that duh-deh-deh-deh-dah-duh-duh crap (the sudden focus on Elmer sharpening his knife doesn't hurt).

It's a shame the other scenes are more predictable, although one of the celebrities that plays a larger role is quite intimidating and Elmer flashes some exceptionally nasty and sinister faces that might have won over the Spumco gang. However, it takes a lot of time developing the best scenes, incidental gags notwithstanding, and is over too soon.

Rating: 5/7

I think it’s just me, but I never got much out of this cartoon (and I’ve watched it dozens of times). A few of the gags are really clever, but they lack a vital ingredient for me to latch onto, maybe because the plot is so repetitive and the gags feel like they were squeezed in arbitrarily, as though they knew without Sylvester’s head shrinking and the other cat’s stupor this thing would be lackluster.

I don’t want to sound like I hate it – I enjoy watching it somewhat, that’s why I give it the lowest “good” score - but Freleng shows a big weakness here: Whereas Tex Avery always made the gags his main focus, supported with a solid plot, this cartoon goes back and forth on whether the plot or the gags should be the main focus, and the plot development goes nowhere. Even Tweety Pie, monotonous though it was, had Sylvester’s owner getting angrier and Sylvester becoming more conniving (and over-the-top with his schemes). There is no development in BAO – it pretends to have a plot, but it’s about as developed as a cartoon like The Farm of Tomorrow. Scenes near the end don’t have any more impact than scenes near the beginning – Elmer is still trying to sleep and Sylvester is still annoying him, and that’s it, until Elmer lights a crate of dynamite and kills them both.

Nevertheless, there are a few scenes I could see somebody else enjoying. Like the aforementioned Alum gag where Syl’s head shrinks (with his voice getting squeaky). There’s also the part where he puts Elmer to bed and suddenly plays a bunch of instruments at once, and at one point he sings very quietly and abruptly pulls out explosives and mallets and things like that to make some noise. My favorite moment is Sylvester asking Elmer if appreciates music at all (Yeah, Elmer, where are your priorities?). Elmer slipping down the stairs and stepping on thumbtacks (twice, consecutively) is a good demonstration of Friz’s comic timing. So never say I condemn cartoons for lack of plot. If they have at least something to make the footage worthwhile I simply won’t…overly praise it.

Rating: 5/7

Second Sylvester and Tweety cartoon takes the characters in a direction they'd never revisit. Tweety is very aggressive here, reveling in causing Sylvester bodily harm while pwaying innocent ("Here Puddy Tat, here's a widdle puddy dog to pway with"). He's very subtle here, though, posing as a passive, helpless canary at first. His design is also different, with a sweetly smile and chunky complexion.

Sylvester gets his eyelid pulled down like a window shade, his uvula knocked around like a punching bag, blown up into an Amos caricature (kinda different for a Sylvester cartoon) that falls flat on his face, and gets assaulted by a dog. Probably the only cartoon where Sylvester actually eats a canary and gets killed by Tweety, even if these events are implied.

Rating: 5/7

Sam's temper is what makes this funny, when he stomps around going "oooooh" and clencing his fists. Bugs disguises himself as a captain ordering Sam into an orgy of movement for which only one or two backgrounds are needed, baits him by pretending to appease his hot temper, and risks both their lives just to send Sam into a panic by throwing a match in the gun powder room, making Sam try to relax by playing jumping jacks.

Rating: 5/7

Is this the first time Friz employed a lengthy chase scene where the characters pause and do stupid poses and run on and off screen in different configurations? Well, I don't think that part is very funny. But the opening gags, with the flying bullets to portray the roughness of the wild west and the random, senseless killings in the saloon are a hoot.

This also develops Sam a bit more than his debut, showing he can be a fun loving guy when under one of Bugs' spells, as well as a stubborn and easily inflamed psycho when angered. In addition to the bullets blazing past traffic lights there's more Avery influence as Bugs runs away from Sam to build a skyscraper, then runs right back to Sam who barely blinks an eye. Then there's the envious gun drawing and the classic "I dare you to step over this line". It's all a big hoot.

Rating:

Rating: