Ali Baba Bunny

Hilarious Bugs & Daffy short from the great Chuck Jones and Michael Maltese. This one reminds me of the Hope & Crosby buddy comedy Road films as Bugs & Daffy travel to the Middle East (looking for Pismo Beach, of all places). There they find a Sultan's treasure but standing in the way of them taking the loot is the Sultan's guard Hassan ("Hassan chop!"). This is such a wonderful cartoon. It's funny from start to finish with beautiful animation (love the colors) and lots of memorable lines. The music is nice and Mel Blanc's voice work is, as you might expect, flawless. It's probably my favorite Bugs & Daffy cartoon where they are friends (or at least not enemies). More of a showcase for Daffy than Bugs, though.

A wrong turn on the way to Pismo Beach finds Bugs and Daffy deep in Ali Baba's cave, where a mountain of treasure tempts the always avaricious duck despite a hulking guard wielding a scimitar. This is a pretty typical Bugs outing. All the expected gags are trotted out as the every-resourceful rabbit flips from identity to identity (genie, snake-charmer, etc) to outwit his dim-witted and credulous opponent despite the best efforts of his pushy, hyper-kinetic, duck-billed sidekick. I remember watching this one as a kid and then running around the playground waving a stick and yelling "Hassan chop", a behaviour that, these days, would result in the rapid deployment of a team of child counsellors tasked with explaining to me that ethnic stereotypes and threats to slice people in twain just aren't funny (#35 in the '50 Greatest Cartoons').

An absolutely wonderful cartoon. But I'm biased - saw it first at the Cartoon Cinema in Sheffield England in 1958 or thereabouts aged 7 with grandmother. To me it's one of the finest and funniest Bugs Bunny cartoons.

Granted it might attract disparaging comment for the stereotypical Arabs - but it is of its time and that time was 1957. So far as I know it never has attracted criticism from the Arab world.

It is delightful for the interplay between the greedy (capitalist?) duck and his pretensions ("I'm comfortably well off...") and the world wise but decent Bugs Bunny - who rescues the duck from his folly only for Daffy to blow it at the end - with yet more greed.

A fable for our times yet again?

Oh, and Pismo Beach is in California, not Florida.

Duncan Stewart.

This is a kind of variation on an Arabian Nights story. It's the old "Open Sesame" thing where an immerse treasure is kept in a cave. Daffy and Bugs are on their way to Pismo Beach, CA, to enjoy the beach, but a wrong turn in Albuquerque gets them lost. They end up in an Arabian desert. Because they have tunneled underground, they pop up in the treasure cave. Of course, when Daffy sees the jewels and gold, he drives Bugs into the ground and begins to take possession of all the loot. Unfortunately for him, Ali Baba or some other guy is around and he isn't happy to see someone running off with his treasure. Just like always, Daffy goes bananas, and Bugs is the unflappable one. Fun, familiar effort by Chuck Jones.

I think I've seen every Looney Tunes cartoon in my short life span. I always preferred WB to Disney, Bugs to Mickey, etc. The best ones are, obviously, the Chuck Jones shorts. But which of those are the best?

I think the answer must be "Ali Baba Bunny". It has the famous Bugs and Daffy rivalry, it has a different setting, it has a hilarious new character (Hassan), it's just cartoon perfection. Also has some of the best damn lines in any Looney Tunes cartoon.

"Open sasparilla? Open Saskatchewan?"

"I'm rich! I'm wealthy! I'm comfortably well off!"

"DUCK. YOU HAVE DESECRATED MY LAMP."

Classic. Absolutely classic. No cartoons will ever match the genius of the Looney Tunes Chuck Jones ones.

The animation is also top notch. I hate seeing a Looney Tunes cartoon with bad animation, but Jones never disappoints. The little things in the animation just make it perfect, like when Daffy first spots the treasure, and his bottom bill shifts side to side in greediness, or when Bugs is surprised by Daffy shouting for help, his toes scrunch up...

Long live Bugs Bunny.