Buccaneer Bunny

Hilarious cartoon directed by Friz Freleng, the best Looney Tunes director next to Chuck Jones. This short is somewhat inspired by the Three Stooges and the gimmicks work great. It's funny to see Sam getting blown up the cannon every three seconds.

I have made no secret of loving Looney Tunes. Ever since I was a little girl, I loved watching them, laughing at the jokes and marvelling at the animation and music. At 18 I still watch them, and a vast majority of them are classics. While not the very best, and not quite top 20 standard, Buccaneer Bunny is simply classic Looney Tunes fun.

The story may be a tad predictable, but it doesn't matter that much to me, as everything else works. The gags work wonderfully, all of them range from amusing to hilarious. True, one or two of them can be seen as predictable or repetitive, but again for me that isn't necessarily a bad thing. The writing is top notch, Buccaneer Bunny contains some of my all-time favourite Yosemite Sam quotes.

Visually, Buccaneer Bunny is just great. While the characters are very well-drawn and the backgrounds excellent to look at, the colours are the real delight, whether you watch it on DVD or TV, the whole cartoon looks incredible. I also love good music in cartoons, films and the like; Buccaneer Bunny has plenty of that. It is rousing and energetic, fairly similar in style to Captain Hareblower.

The characters are still likable and interact very well together. Yosemite Sam is a great foil, while Bugs is always entertaining and I loved the spoof on Charles Laughton. Another outstanding asset is the voice work- Mel Blanc rarely disappointed and had the gift of elevating even the weakest of material, and once again he is stellar. Overall, Buccaneer Bunny is a most excellent cartoon and a must-see really. 9/10 Bethany Cox

Buccaneer Bunny features Yosemite Sam's second encounter with Bugs after their premiere in Hare Trigger(1945). In Hare Trigger Sam was more advantageous to Bugs, as a train robber, where Bugs was a passenger. Provided that with Buccaneer Bunny, Sam as a pirate, he has a lot to worry about. Sam's sore points give Bugs a chance to twit him every time.

At the beginning, Sam was burying his pirate treasure to a deserted island, where he comes across to Bugs putting on the jewels taken out of the treasure chest. When Sam takes back his treasury from Bugs, he tends to carry the treasure to a different island. But Bugs never lets him to do so. Leaving Sam alone in the island, Bugs takes the oars of Sam's rowboat, and swims to the pirate ship. Following him, Sam swims for the oars. He takes back the oars, then swims back to the island to take the rowboat and to row it back to his ship. It was Sam's prevailing mastermind that he cares more about his rowboat than his treasure chest. Later on, Sam starts to worry about his pirate ship; he leaves the treasure in the island, and goes to ship for not allowing Bugs to cause any trouble.

First stealing his treasure, then blowing up his pirate ship; Bugs plays Sam's biggest menace in a masterly manner. He takes Sam into his service as a call-boy, masquerading a famous captain. The memorable moments of this episode are how Bugsy hides cannon fires behind doors, behind cabinets, above conning towers, within rabbit holes... Wherever Sam looking for Bugs, he's having detonating cannon balls to his face over and over again.

These must be the highest explosive effects in a Looney Tunes episode. More than half the length of the time Sam appears in charcoal dust. Every explosive effect brings a laughter effect beside it. This episode is available in the MGM/UA video of Starring Bugs Bunny and Friends (1990).

So many of the B.Bunny toons are nothing short of miraculous: I don't know how this one rates in the pantheon of B.B. cartoons, but it is definitely hard to top as far as pacing---absolutely brilliant. The comic timing, blending of the music (hard to imagine how anyone could score a B.B. cartoon--the painstaking detail!) And the clincher, for me, is how my son roars with laughter when Yosemite Sam panics and dives for the matches that Bugs nonchalantly tosses down into a shaft filled with explosives--doesn't every ship have an explosives shaft--(wink-wink) Again, the pacing: frenetic from beginning to end, perhaps not one of the more cerebral B.B. tunes, but worthy of Keystone cops or Buster Keaton for sure.

If Gilligan and the other castaways had ever had to battle pirates, the result probably would have looked like what "Buccaneer Bunny" portrays. Specifically, Seagoin' (Yosemite) Sam is burying his treasure, when Bugs Bunny pops up. Sam's subsequent efforts to get rid of the long-eared varmint usually result in him getting blasted by the cannon every few seconds.

Anytime that Bugs and Sam co-star in a cartoon, you know that you're in for something good, and this one is no exception. As it is, when Bugs first appears through Sam's treasure, he looks like either a disco pimp or a rapper pimp (or both) with all the jewels. But no matter how either character looks, it's always a hoot to hear Sam going off on his angry rants ("barnacle-bitten landlubber"), and see Bugs imitate Charles Laughton as Capt. Bligh. Really funny.