El Conejo Alí Babá

Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck are burrowing their way to a beach in South Florida they take a wrong turning and end up in a cave containing diamonds and riches. Daffy immediately reacts and greedily tries to claim all the treasure for himself. However as he carries it out of the cave he meets Hassan, the guard, who threatens to chop him in half. Daffy runs back to Bugs for help.

Any short film staring Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck is going to have potential no matter what the setting or plot, however it is no guarantee that the cartoon will work necessarily. This film is a case in point as I didn't feel it was very good. The material is reasonable enough and there is enough energy to be amusing but it is never really laugh-out-loud funny.

Part of the problem for me were the characters. Bugs is OK but feels like he doesn't have enough material to really do his tricky stuff well, this is the downside of splitting the short with Daffy. As a fan of Daffy in his crazy period, his greedy side is not as funny to me but it is that that the film relies on here. As such this weakened the short a little for me but for fans of that side of the duck it shouldn't be too much of a problem.

Overall this is an average cartoon despite the presence of two big stars. Neither Bugs nor Daffy are really used as well as they have been in other things on their own. However any short with these two is always going to be at least worth a look.

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.

Personally I usually do not like episodes where Daffy Duck is annoyingly cruel, but I was very impressed with this one. In "Ali Baba Bunny" are surprises, very good gags and jokes and a theme that works well. The animation and lines from Daffy were also impressive and I did not begin to mind too much that he was, as he phrased it himself, "a greedy slob" in this episode.

The episode begins with Ali Baba closing the cave to the well-known Arabian treasure. He tells his guard, Hassan, to guard the cave well and goes off on his very small camel. What Hassan was not expecting was a black duck called Daffy and a grey bunny called Bugs to come up from underground into the cave. Bugs Bunny is beginning to become worried when he realises he is not where he wanted to be, but Daffy is perfectly happy to stay where he is and be "comfortably well off"...

I recommend this episode to anyone who likes a good laugh, for anyone who does not mind a greedy black duck and for anyone who likes Looney Tunes in general. As bobthemoo proves (he is a Looney Tunes fan, by the way people), not every Looney Tunes fan will enjoy this, but I say this episode is worth a try. Enjoy "Ali Baba Bunny"! :-)