Long-Haired Hare (1949)
Directed by Chuck Jones
Written by Michael Maltese
Animation by Ken Harris
Music by Carl Stalling
“Long Haired Hare” is one of the many examples of the wonderful marriage of music and comedy with the Looney Tunes. The way the animators manage to merge the medium of music as a means of helping to land comedy is brilliant and it amounts to one of my top ten Bugs Bunny shorts of all time. What’s even more outstanding is that “Long Haired Hare” feels like two shorts merged in to one without a single flaw. One portion of the narrative for this short involves Bugs trying to play music while he’s outwitting opera singer Giovanni Jones. The second portion involves Bugs basically wreaking all out havoc by sabotaging Jones’ opera and putting him through pure hell.
In his home Giovanni Jones is practicing for his upcoming opera performance when he is interrupted by Bugs Bunny playing his banjo a few yards away. Hopelessly distracted and infuriated by his intrusion, Giovanni makes sure to pummel Bugs at every given chance, encouraging Bugs to seek his own form of revenge. Everything about “Long Haired Hare” is Looney Tunes at their absolute best. The animation is top tier, the comedy is top tier, the comic timing is top tier, so is the music, the art design, and the voice acting. While Blanc performs as Bugs to his usual skill, the voice of Giovanni Jones apparently went unknown and uncredited for decades.
It was later revealed to be none other than Nicolai Shutorev, who is just excellent in the role of Giovanni Jones. Although pretty much his entire role revolves around him singing to various tempos and rhythms, he is absolutely hysterical from beginning to end. Jones is a one and done villain but one that really helps exemplify how Bugs is just so much funnier when he’s punching up and not punching down. Giovanni Jones is a blowhard and diva who just refuses to let Bugs attend to his own hobbies, and despite Bugs’ best efforts, he decides that revenge is the only way to deal with this foil.
The second half feels a lot like a take on “Magical Maestro,” sans the magic, as Jones drops us in to a whole new scenario that takes off quite flawlessly. Jones’ and the immaculate background art helps set the stage for Bugs ultimate revenge as he tends to really let a lot roll off his back in the beginning. Once Bugs arrives as Leopold, he puts Giovanni through the wringer using music as a form of torture that is delivers on almost non-stop laughs. Whether it’s Bugs raising Giovanni’s tempo from high to low, his exaggerated hand motioning, and the finale where he prompts a long, extended solo from Giovanni that brings the house down, it’s downright hysterical.
“Long Haired Hare” is firmly in my top ten Bugs Bunny shorts, as it has just about everything you’d want from Looney Tunes with top tier delivery all around and Chuck Jones at his absolute best. Years later, it still manages to garner pretty raucous laughs from me.
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