Mad as a Mars Hare (1963)
Directed by Chuck Jones and Maurice Noble
Story by John Dunn
Animation by Ken Harris, Richard Thompson, Bob Bransford, Tom Ray, Harry Love
Music by Bill Lava
Marvin the Martian amuses himself by viewing the Earth through a telescope. He watches a rocket launch from the Florida peninsula – and within seconds, the spacecraft crashes through his observatory and lands on Mars. The rocket’s sole occupant is Astro-Rabbit Bugs Bunny, who claims the planet with a metal carrot-shaped canister that opens to wave a flag marked “Earth” and mechanized instruments that play “Yankee Doodle.” Marvin’s attempt to capture Bugs backfire when Bugs accidentally disintegrates him. Marvin tries again but uses one of his weapons incorrectly and turns Bugs into a behemothic “Neanderthal Rabbit” who crushes him.
The last and least of the Golden Age cartoons featuring Marvin, “Mad as a Mars Hare” is a dismal and annoying effort. The characters spend most of the film either talking to themselves or breaking the fourth wall to gab with the audience. Nothing that they say is even vaguely amusing.
John Dunn’s script is so inept that Bugs and Marvin don’t interact until the cartoon is nearly two-thirds completed, and their confrontations are limited to standing in one place while talking and fumbling with Martian weaponry. While Bugs’ transformation into the Neanderthal Rabbit is a great sight gag, it comes much too late to have a lasting effect and the cartoon ends with the transformed Bugs talking yet again to the viewer.
The cheap-looking animation magnifies the story’s shortcomings and the dual-direction by Chuck Jones and Maurice Noble is abominable. This one should have stayed on the storyboard.