There’s an old baseball story involving a young fan walking up to Detroit Tigers star Al Kaline and unfavorably comparing him to Mickey Mantle, to which Kaline replied, “Son, nobody’s half as good as Mickey Mantle”. The original Looney Tunes have definitely reached a similar Mantle-esque status among both cartoon aficionados and everyday people. Like a succession of overhyped athletes in the shadow of legends, the various ways in which they’ve been reimagined have met with mixed receptions, almost all considered inferior to the classics.
Somewhere between the cult following of Space Jam and the widely panned Loonatics lies The Looney Tunes Show, a fairly loose framing for their new direct-to-DVD film Rabbits Run. It would be impossible for the writers here, let alone anyone to recreate the same sense of comedic timing that creators Chuck Jones and Michael Maltese were able to, so writer Hugh Davidson and director Jeff Siergey instead opt for a rapid paced chase adventure. Much faster than TLTS on average, there’s a good deal of slapstick in the span of roughly 75 minutes- perhaps a response to complaints about the show’s heavy reliance on dialogue.
However, the film pretty much disregards whatever continuity the show held. Bugs, Lola and the rest of the cast this time are simply animated actors, just now meeting for the first time in the movie’s canon and yet to fall in love (or for Lola to become hilariously obsessed with Bugs, I should say). Our favorite butterbrained bunny girl works as a clerk in a perfume store under a condescending boss, dreaming of designing a fragrance enticing enough to change people’s lives for the better (the aftermath of her “I Want” song is brief but brilliant). Bugs is a cab driver who takes her back to her apartment, where she uses a rare flower given to her by her landlord Speedy Gonzales in order to realize her dream.
Government official Foghorn Leghorn (that’s not a typo, Foghorn Leghorn is a five star general now. And people say we need more budget cuts) is dismayed that the flower’s capabilities are being used for something so frivolous, and given that Lola’s fantastic new perfume actually turns people invisible, it’s easy to see his viewpoint. The two lagomorphs eventually become fugitives hunted down by federal agent Elmer Fudd, on top of getting mixed up in Yosemite Sam’s botched robbery attempt, fellow cabbie Daffy Duck’s laziness and incompetence, and Marvin the Martian who may be the closest thing the Looney Tunes have to a “final boss” personality.
In most of his related media Bugs is presented as a nonchalant, smooth talking trickster, often to an unflappable degree. Here he’s closer to his show persona of a befuddled straight man, though he shows shades of his natural cleverness now and then. The fool roles go to Daffy and Lola, the latter given a decent amount of energy and spunk by co-writer Rachel Ramras in Kristen Wiig’s absence. Though no one can ever touch Mel Blanc, Jeff Bergman for his part adds a layer of humanity to Bugs I feel he sometimes lacked.
If anything hurts the film, it’s the television quality of the animation. It’s not distractingly awful, but to me it felt at times like it couldn’t keep up with what the script was attempting, and some of the facial expressions on the models like Elmer Fudd and Yosemite Sam’s looked off. Bugs Bunny and his friends in an adventure caper feels like something worthy of big screen treatment, and I would have liked to see a story like this- something a bit less self aware than Back In Action- get enough of a budget for the animators to really take advantage of all the comedic possibilities.
While it’s not going to make you split your sides laughing the way the old classics might, Looney Tunes: Rabbits Run still has some fun moments if you’re a fan of the Cartoon Network show or a longtime devotee to the franchise. It feels like a LT story geared towards perhaps a younger crowd in mind, but they’re better off with this than Baby Looney Tunes in that sense. Slightly recommended, and hey Warner Bros, it’s 2015. Can’t you just officially out Mac and Tosh already?