Das große Schlummern

After one time too often falling foul of Bugs Bunny's tricks, Elmer Fudd rips up his contract with Warner Brothers Studios and leaves to get some R&R fishing by the lake. Realising that his strongest career sidekick is important in his own career, Bugs goes after him and enters his dreams to encourage him to return to the job at hand.

The cartoon starts very abruptly and continues in that vein as scenes appear to just jump around very quickly and without a huge amount of internal structure. The plot cleverly acknowledges a reality of contracts (which of course, isn't reality for cartoon characters) and also has some funny asides from Bugs, but it doesn't appear to have a central plot. The dream sequence is colourful and well drawn but not necessarily funny as a result. I never fully got why Bugs took this approach to the problem!

The characters are good. Bugs does his usual stuff but doesn't seem relaxed in the cartoon - the dialogue is edited too fine and close for his style I felt. Fudd has little to do and his character doesn't serve as well as he usually does as a foil to Bugs - he simply isn't given the time to respond in a way he normally is.

Overall, almost any cartoon with Bugs and Fudd is going to be work watching for me, but this one just seemed a bit aimless - like the dream sequence was the original idea and the rest of it was just a thin excuse to get to it. It is all over a bit fast and without any really hilarious action, it is OK but really is a poor entry from this famous double act.

Bob Clampett's final short for Warner Bros. is a classic Bugs & Elmer cartoon. Elmer's tired of the routine they're in where he chases Bugs but never wins. So he tears up his contract and quits the cartoon! Bugs, determined to get Elmer back, invades his dreams (like Freddy Krueger) leading to some surreal and wacky imagery. The music is bouncy and cheerful. The voice work from Mel Blanc and Arthur Q. Bryan is expectedly flawless. The animation is beautiful with well-drawn characters and backgrounds and lovely Technicolor. The dream stuff is amazing. Funny gags, lines, and fourth-wall breaking makes this one any Looney Tunes fan will want to see.

If you thought that Bob Clampett had gone as far out of normalcy as possible with "Porky in Wackyland" and "The Great Piggy Bank Robbery", then check out "The Big Snooze". When Elmer Fudd - tired of always Bugs Bunny always embarrassing him - tears up his Warner Bros. contract, Bugs does something that I wouldn't even imagine him (of all people) doing: he invades Elmer's dreams, creating one of the most surreal sequences that I've ever witnessed. Who would have ever guessed that Bugs Bunny was Freddy Krueger's forebear?!

Above all, it's a good thing that I first saw this cartoon now, when I'm old enough to fully understand what it portrays (not to mention that I know who Bette Davis was). Had I watched this when I was six or somewhere thereabouts, I would have naively laughed at it without realizing what the gist was; or it might have scared me. As Looney Tunes screenwriter Michael Maltese said in an interview: "We wrote cartoons for grownups, that was the secret."

But overall, this is a really cool cartoon. Bob Clampett, during the approximately one decade that he worked with the Termite Terrace crowd, created a body of work beyond what I could have ever conceived of. I recommend it.

As usual, Elmer Fudd is hunting Bugs Bunny. Bugs puts another one over him. He has had enough and quits on the spot. He rips up his WB contract and goes fishing. Bugs finds him napping while fishing. It is a trip into his dreamland and Bugs turns it into a nightmare.

I like the turn and going meta. I am less convinced of the dreamland sequence. I can think of many ideas for dreams including Elmer Fudd turning into a rabbit being chased by Bugs Bunny dressed as a hunter. Most of all, I don't buy the ending. If he gets hounded by Bugs in his nightmare, he would never go back to his job. This is adventurous although I have questions.

Big Snooze, The (1946)

*** (out of 4)

Elmer Fudd, tired of being abused by Bugs Bunny, decides to tear up his contract to Warner and go on vacation. Bugs needs him back so the rabbit invades his dreams to cause a nightmare. This is certainly a wild short but I've never found it to be a funny one. What does work here are the amazing colors inside the "nightmare", which look absolutely stunning in their remastered form. The visuals are certainly the main reason to watch this film as there aren't too many laughs. The film starts off with a chase, which would normally end a cartoon but here the gag is somewhat funny. The best sequence is the famous one where Elmer is tied to the train tracks and a train of rabbits run over him.