8 Ball Bunny

Chuck Jones's '8 Ball Bunny' is a terrific sequel to the excellent 'Frigid Hare'. It's the second of two shorts which feature a cute character who came to be known as Playboy Penguin. A mute baby penguin dressed in top hat and bow-tie, Playboy is a great character whose cuteness is played up for exaggerated laughs, unlike Friz Freleng's sickening cutification of Tweety, which was mostly played for unsuccessful "awwwwws"! 'Frigid Hare' had played out as a traditional chase film with Bugs defending the penguin from a grotesque Eskimo stereotype. '8 Ball Bunny' widens the scope, presenting us with an epic road movie in which Bugs must travel across half the globe in order to return the penguin to the South Pole. Along the way he gets into numerous scrapes and continuously encounters a caricature of Humphrey Bogart in 'The Treasure of the Sierra Madre'. Although it was probably a wise choice to retire Playboy Penguin after just two appearances, both the cartoons that feature him are brilliant and, with its epic adventure story, '8 Ball Bunny' stands out as the best of the two.

Bugs and an ice-skating penguin: now there's a new storyline. The penguins is part of the "Brooklyn Ice Frolics." One problem: the show closed and they left without the little guy! He wanders around and winds up falling into Bugs' hole outside the city.

Bugs freaks out: "It's a boid - a boid in a tuxedo!! Hey, playboy, what's the idea of crashing in here in the middle of the night and disrupting an honest rabbit's slumber?"

To make a long story short, the little penguin's tears get Bugs' sympathy so he takes him to where he thinks all penguins belong: the South Pole. They begin by hitching rides aboard a train, a la hobos, headed for "the Deep, Deep South."

Their adventures take them to the steamship "Admiral Byrd" and a few other spots. I won't divulge any more because there is still over half the story to go, at this point.

Suffice to say Bugs' is both funny and a very good protector of our little guy, who applauds every time something good happens. It's very cute and a really great cartoon overall with plenty of laughs and charm. Bugs adds to the humor just by the way he pronounces a lot of words in here. Having Humphrey Bogart make a guest appearance didn't hurt, either!

This is outstanding entertainment.

Bugs Bunny had gotten acquainted with a penguin once before (in 1949's "Frigid Hare"), but this time he goes all out. After a penguin gets left in a performance hall, Bugs agrees to take the little guy to the South Pole. The journey down proves to be quite far from what anyone expected, especially given the Panama Canal tax and encounters with a certain movie star.

"8-Ball Bunny" is far from the greatest cartoon. It seems like one of the shorts that they made to fill in the gaps between the really famous ones (1950 also saw the release of "The Scarlet Pumpernickel" and "The Rabbit of Seville"). But no matter, it's got some neat scenes, namely the penguin's tears freezing. Worth seeing, if only once.

Hoboken. Maybe he knew Frank Sinatra.

Bugs bunny meets a lost penguin and sets out to get him home to the south pole. Naturally there are a few slips along the way, but the indestructible bunny is equal to all challenges.

Better than average bugs bunny cartoon but what a strange title. It doesn't seem to have anything at all to do with the cartoon. Chuck Jones does seem to go in for odd choices of title but this one beats them all!

8 Ball Bunny (1950)

*** (out of 4)

A small penguin gets separated from his traveling circus but thankfully he runs into Bugs Bunny who agrees to take him back home to the South Pole. This Warner/Looney Tunes short isn't going to be mistaken for a masterpiece as it doesn't contain enough laughs or action but there's no denying that the story itself is cute enough as is the penguin. For the most part this short moves well enough and the pacing is certain good enough to make the 7-minute running time go by very quickly. The highlight of the film is the rather funny map that shows the progress that the two are making. Of course, the scenes in between the maps really aren't all that clever or funny. One such example is a scene where Bugs is playing guitar while the penguin makes them a boat. It's just not funny. The one thing that does work is a few cameo spots by Humphrey Bogart playing the character from THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE.