Hare Ribbin' (1944)

Good start, but then it gets ruined

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

The movie is made so realistic it has a lot of that WoW feeling at the right moments and never tooo over the top. the suspense is done so well and the emotion is felt. Very well put together with the music and all.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

. . . for HACKSAW RIDGE, the alternate ending (or "Director's Cut" included as a Special Feature on Looney Tunes Golden Collection, Volume 5, Disc 3) version of Bugs Bunny's HARE RIBBIN' surpasses the tamer theatrically released incarnation of this soggy story for the distinction of being perhaps the worst Bugs Bunny cartoon short ever (there still may be one or two I haven't viewed yet). There's a difference between being "Looney" and going off the rails into nonsensical derangement; it's analogous to Vincent Van Gogh painting "Starry Night" or sunflowers, and him cutting off one of his own ears as a piece of "performance art." No sane person could get a chuckle out of five minutes of Bugs as an underwater harp-strumming mermaid playing tag with a foreign-accented (and also illogically water-breathing) pooch. However, when the mutt "bites" Bugs in half and seems to be bursting with a mouthful of fresh rabbit, this appears to be the source material for the 75 chatty Purple Heart Winners U.S. Army Medic Desmond Doss is shown roping off HACKSAW RIDGE like so many slabs of sushi. Most of these wounded men are pictured as being cut off at the waist (as Bugs pretends to be in HARE RIBBIN'). Besides all the Flame-Throwered Japanese Defenders of Okinawa running around screaming, most of Gibson's other war Quick & Dead also are shown to be split in half, like Bugs between the bread slices. Perhaps HARE RIBBIN' could have been better if the Looney Tuners had thrown in dozens of cute cadaver-chomping rats going after Bugs' "leftovers," as Mel did with his hordes of World War Two casualties.

Bugs Bunny has always been one of animation's best, funniest, most interesting and most iconic characters. Bob Clampett is perhaps not as famous as the likes of Chuck Jones, Fritz Freleng or Tex Avery, but he was a very interesting and very good animation director in his own right with a quite unique visual style.'Hare Ribbin', to be honest, is not one of the best from either. It's interesting, it's amusing and it's very well made, but in the case of both Bugs and Clampett 'Hare Ribbin' is a contender for their strangest, and the weirdness did get in the way at times.There is definitely plenty to like. Clampett's visual style is immediately distinctive and is not just beautifully rendered but the imagination and wonderful exaggeration put into it makes it eye-popping. The colours are vibrant, the backgrounds very meticulous in detail and the drawing fluid and very smooth.Carl Stalling never disappoints and one of my favourite composers in cartoon history, 'Hare Ribbin' does nothing to change that perception. Anybody expecting luscious orchestration, characterful rhythms, clever use of instrumentation and sounds and the ability to elevate gags to a greater level rather than just adding to it will find all of those aplenty.Regarding the writing, it does have freshness and wit, more so from Bugs than with the Russian dog. Just don't look for logic and sense, they're cast to the wind here, not that you should expect that in cartoons but they are replaced by a bizarre weirdness that doesn't always feel right. Bugs' mermaid and French waiter disguises are especially a lot of fun though.As for the darker and more violent ending for a Looney Tunes cartoon, it is definitely not a bad thing to take risks (personally applaud risk-taking when done right, and tend to appreciate the effort if it doesn't quite come off, much less so if it badly fails at it), but the ending does feel like a cop out and is at odds with the rest of the cartoon.No complaints can be made with Bugs, he's still as funny and smartly likable as ever. Was less keen on the Russian dog, who is not one of our favourite rabbit's best foils, a bit dull and more dumb than funny. Mel Blanc does characteristically wonderfully as Bugs, Sam Wolfe however didn't do much for me due to an inconsistent accent that never seemed sure what it was meant to be.Overall, well-made and amusing but has a strangeness that doesn't quite work. 7/10 Bethany Cox

Some kind of dog: a combination French Poodle and Russian Hound, is out looking for a rabbit. Immediately, we see he is another dumb foil for Bugs Bunny. It seems Bugs always comes across the dumbest characters, which is a shame because few animated animals ever match wits with the clever BB. This dog is really stupid. After sniffing Bugs up and down his body, the only thing he knows is that Bugs has "B.O!" Thanks, we needed to know that!After two minutes the chase scene begins as the dumb pooch finally reaches that IS a rabbit. In one of the more bizarre sequences I've seen in a Bugs Bunny cartoon, Bugs dives underwater, hops away (on the sand at the bottom of the lake) and then is seen sitting there with a blonde wig, a mermaid's tale and playing a harp and singing. He's in drag, with lipstick, long lashes and the whole bit. Of course, the stupid dog thinks the "woman" is super hot.Bugs continues to do what he does best - tease this stupid idiot. All of it, including Bugs pretending to be a French waiter, is done underwater. How are these two animals breathing? I guess the writers didn't bother with that detail. They didn't bother with a lot of humor, either, or it's just too sappy for today's crowd. I love Bugs Bunny but you can't win them all. This was not one of his best.

So the dog was supposed to have a Russian accent?! I never realized that; I had always thought that he sounded kind of effeminate - maybe he's supposed to be a Russian woman. But the Soviet Union was our ally during WWII, so I can't really tell what it's supposed to mean that he sounds Russki. As for the aspect that they can breathe underwater...well, this is a cartoon, so nothing has to make sense. The point is for Bugs Bunny to be irreverent, even dressing up as a woman (interesting that they were able to get that into a cartoon back then). It's pretty funny, but still sort of brain-twisting.Yeah, maybe that shouldn't have happened to a dog.