rocketXpert

When I saw the low rating this movie had received, I assumed it had something to do with the fact that it was ostensibly a spin-off of The Looney Tunes Show, which I personally really enjoy, but has garnered its share of haters for having the audacity to not be exactly like the Looney Tunes they remember from childhood. Now that I've seen Rabbits Run, I assume it has more to do with the fact that the movie is just not very good. Out of all the Looney Tunes movies I've seen, including the ones that were just glorified clip shows, this might be the lamest.

Before I watched Rabbits Run, I couldn't help feeling a little let down that I would not be hearing Kristen Wiig reprising the role of Lola. However, that ended up being the least of my grievances. It turns out that Rachel Ramras is actually a perfectly suitable replacement, and after a couple of minutes, I'd almost entirely managed to forget that she sounded different at all. What I should have been more concerned about was pretty much every other aspect of this movie.

Aside from maintaining the personalities of a few of the characters that were established on The Looney Tunes Show, this is not set within the same continuity as the series, which feels like a wasted opportunity right off the bat. I know that the Looney Tunes have not maintained a consistent continuity throughout the bulk of of their long career, but part of what what made The Looney Tunes Show appealing to me is that it did have its own internal canon. If you're not going to utilize that, why make this movie a spin-off of that series? Imagine if they made a movie spin-off of Friends, but then it was revealed that it would be pretending that the show's ten seasons never happened and that the actors would all be playing different versions of their characters, meeting for the first time. Maybe Joey only shows up for a quick cameo. Fans might find that a little disconcerting, not to mention disappointing. Sure, the Looney Tunes characters will probably continue to exist in one form or another from now until we're all dead, but as someone with a particular fondness for the incarnations of those characters that TLTS gave us, I can't help feeling a little melancholy that that this chapter of their history is ending on an unfortunately lackluster note.

Everything about Rabbits Run is inferior to The Looney Tunes Show, including the animation. There were some sweet moments between Bugs and Lola, but beyond that, I can't say that I had a good time watching it. They basically ditched what made TLTS unique in favor of doing a rather tedious, cheap-looking, unfunny adventure movie. I doubt that abandoning the sitcom format at this late date is going to win over any haters while fans such as myself are likely to only be bummed out that what could very well be The Looney Tunes Show's swan song turned out to be such a dull mess.

I am not prejudiced against slower-paced or art-house films, nor am I necessarily opposed to dark movies and/or movies with downbeat endings. After seeing some of the positive critical responses to this movie, I looked forward to watching "Under the Skin" and being able to look down my nose afterward at the hoi polloi who didn't "get" it. Well, I got it. It's not a hard story to follow once you know the basic premise. The entire plot could probably be summarized on the back of a postcard with room to spare. I just didn't like it.

Fans of horror movies might find this movie to be disappointing. However, it was too much of a horror movie for my tastes. This is one of the more upsetting things I've ever watched. I don't understand what the point was of this movie was, unless it was just to be depressingly nihilistic.

I've seen a few comparisons between "Under the Skin" and Kubrick, which I can kind of understand. But here's the big difference for me: Kubrick's "2001 A Space Odyssey" filled me with a sense of awe about the universe. This movie, on the other hand, filled me with dread. I can't quite say that this is a bad movie, but it's a movie that made me feel bad.

Judging by most of the reviews I've seen, this episode made an indelible impression on a lot of people when they watched it as children. You can count me among that number. However, I didn't see the entire episode or even most of it. At best, I only saw a couple minutes, and yet that was sufficient to stick with me to this day. Since the advent of the internet, I've made attempts to track down whatever it was I saw, looking through the episode descriptions of various older anthology series. The Alfred Hitchcock Hour was one I never considered, however, since I wasn't aware that it ever delved into the supernatural.

I could not have been more than three at the time. What I remember watching is this: A woman finds her little girl sitting in front of the davenport, talking to her "imaginary friends," most of whom have unusual sounding names. When the woman looks under the davenport, there's nobody there, and the distraught little girl accuses the woman of chasing her friends away. At that point, my Mom turned off the TV, probably fearing it was too frightening for me. She may have been right; the little girl's performance was unnerving, and at that age, I was easily scared; I was even freaked out by certain stuff I saw on Sesame Street (ie, Kermit chasing Grover while wearing fake teeth).

Despite the danger to my tender young psyche, I sort of wish my Mom had let me watch the entire thing. In a way, the damage had already been done; that one scene was eerily intense enough that it never left me, and I spent many years not knowing what I'd seen and wondering what happened next. I'm not sure if those decades of uncertainty were any better than the risk of an even greater childhood trauma.

One thing seems pretty certain. If I had seen the rest of the episode when I was little, it would definitely have made a much bigger impact on me than it did when I finally managed to watch it last night.

I was so excited to have stumbled upon the thing that I'd been trying to find for so long. I turned off the lights and prepared to be creeped out. But I'm not quite as easily frightened these days, and I suppose nothing could match over three decades' worth of expectations.

The ending is good, though while it might have emotionally scarred the three year old me for life, watching it now, I just found it rather predictable and not nearly as upsetting as the ending to some other episodes of this show I've seen. Some reviews I've read elsewhere suggest that voodoo is at play here- one person even referred to the doll the girl receives as a voodoo doll. Why? Because it's black? Seems like a somewhat racist assumption. I thought it was kind of cool that this little white girl would become enamored of a black doll, though I don't for a second think it was a colorblind choice; rather, when the ending comes, the racial difference helps make things abundantly clear that something magical has occurred. Anyway, if voodoo folklore involves wee folk who live under furniture and ride on frogs, this is the first I've heard of it.

Speaking of which, if this had been a half hour episode, all the stuff about the little people that only the girl could see- the part I remembered so vividly- could have easily been cut out without it affecting the rest of the plot. Also, what's with the disagreement the servants have about the ham she asked him to get from the smoke house? She insists she told him, but he insists he would have remembered. It can't be there for no reason, but it's never explained either. All of it hints at something strange going on, and is supposedly tied together in a way the audience isn't meant to fully understand, but the story feels a bit padded or disjointed as a result.

It's often been said that what is left up to the imagination is scarier than what you are actually shown. That's definitely true in this case. Thinking about the brief snippet I saw as an impressionable child was far creepier than seeing the episode in full as a jaded adult.