Following the critical and commercial success of \u201cThe Bugs Bunny\/Road Runner Movie,\u201d Warner Bros. commissioned a second feature film that mixed its classic cartoons with new animation. Whereas the first film was helmed by Chuck Jones and only included clips from the post-1948 films that he directed, \u201cThe Looney Looney Looney Bugs Bunny Movie\u201d was handed to Friz Freleng and he followed Jones\u2019 lead by focusing entirely on his output.
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The film opens with a pre-credit sequence that offers \u201cKnighty Knight Bugs,\u201d the only Bugs Bunny cartoon to win an Academy Award. Following that offering, the film evolves in a three-act presentation.<\/p>\n
The first act, \u201cSatan\u2019s Waitin\u2019,\u201d mirrors an episode of \u201cThe Bugs Bunny Show\u201d with Yosemite Sam dying and going to Hell, where he makes a deal with the devil to capture Bugs and bring him down below. The second act, \u201cThe Unmentionables,\u201d focuses on the gangster characters Rocky and Mugsy and their interactions with Bugs, Daffy Duck, and Tweety and Sylvester. <\/p>\n
The third act, \u201cThe Oswalds,\u201d is a spoof of the Oscars \u2013 the award\u2019s name is obviously in honor of the Disney silent film creation and not the Dallas Book Depository employee. The running gag involves an angry Daffy Duck who is not nominated and feels he is more worthy of the prize than Bugs.<\/p>\n
There is no problem with the selection of classic shorts included here. That includes another Oscar winner (\u201cBirds Anonymous\u201d) plus the jazzy gem \u201cThree Little Bops\u201d along with \u201cHigh Diving Hare\u201d and \u201cShow Biz Bugs.\u201d<\/p>\n
However, \u201cThe Looney Looney Looney Bugs Bunny Movie\u201d feels like an overlong version of the prime-time television specials that Warner Bros. was producing at the time. Even at a relatively compact 79 minutes the film begins to wear out its welcome long before the closing credits where Porky Pig has problems delivering his trademark sendoff. (CBS felt it was overlong and removed 12 minutes of footage when the film was broadcast in 1984.) <\/p>\n
Also, the new animation is visibly inferior to the classic work, although some fun can be found in the red-carpet entrances of the characters in \u201cThe Oswalds\u201d segment. But while the classic cartoons are always a joy, they received a hack-chop editing here that disrupts their carefully constructed narratives. <\/p>\n
Nonetheless, the film was cheap to produce and managed to absorb enough of a profit to warrant a few more feature films.<\/p>\n