Homeless Hare

Skyscraper construction destroys Bugs Bunny's rabbit hole. Bugs get unceremoniously dumped by construction worker Hercules. Of course, Bugs is not going to take it lying down.

This is a classic Bugs cartoon. The premise is simple and that helps. All the turns are buried in my memory. I love the whole thing from start to finish. The heated rivet is terrific fun. Maybe, I would want a famous foil going against Bugs. Hercules is a rather generic hulking construction worker type. He doesn't automatically engender villainy. Maybe he should be a wolf. I don't know. It is hard to improve on a classic.

A construction worker, who Bugs Bunny refers to as Hercules, has shoveled off his rabbit hole.He refuses to put it back.This means war! Homeless Hare from 1950 is a Merrie Melodies cartoon by Chuck Jones.Besides Mel Blanc we hear John T. Smith as a voice artist.This short has a lot of funny, zany stuff.We see Bugs playing with the elevator controls while the worker is inside the elevator.We see Bugs impersonating a building inspector, who orders the worker to make a high brick wall.We also see Bugs being knocked out.At the end we learn that a man's home is his castle.Not necessarily the most classic Bugs Bunny, but still very enjoyable.

I have been a Looney Tunes fan all my life, and I love Homeless Hare. It does have a simple premise and the story is simple too. That isn't a bad thing I feel, quite the contrary and even if it were a bad thing so much compensates. The writing is just brilliant, and some of the gags are among my favourites in a Looney Tunes cartoon, especially with the construction worker hovering on a teeter-totter making every effort to keep it balanced. Jones' direction is also superb, and I also loved the vibrancy of the animation and the energy of the music.

Bugs is his usual crafty, likable and witty self while the construction worker is a fantastic foil, more dim-witted than he is in No Parking Hare where he is quite smart and calculating but I liked this side as well. And Mel Blanc and John T. Smith give stellar vocals. Overall, a hugely enjoyable cartoon, that moves at a sharp pace and keeps me satisfied until the end. 10/10 Bethany Cox

Chuck Jones's 'Homeless Hare' is a fantastic example of a simple premise made brilliant by great writing and genius direction. Pitting Bugs Bunny against a bullying construction worker, 'Homeless Hare' takes place on the oft-used setting of the building site but there's nothing hackneyed about these antics. Jones infuses Bugs's heckling with exceptional timing, increasing the hilarity of the gags significantly. "Hercules" the construction worker is a great foil for Bugs and there's also a diminutive assistant who steals every scene he's in with his deadpan performance. While Jones will always be best remembered for his more inventive shorts, he always also had a knack for infusing the traditional heckling and chase cartoons with a new energy and inventiveness. 'Homeless Hare' is an excellent example of this. Jones takes what could have been very standard fare in the hands of another director and manages to fashion a mini-classic.

If we've seen enough Bugs Bunny cartoons, we should know that he doesn't let anyone walk all over him and get away with it. This is truly the case in "Homeless Hare", as a brutish developer digs up Bugs's rabbit hole to make room for a building. The rest of the cartoon pretty much consists of Bugs coming up with ways to punish the developer. Probably the best part is the whole sequence that looks as if it was designed by Rube Goldberg, namely because you think that one thing is going to happen, but something even funnier ends up happening! How did they come up with these things?!

Anyway, these cartoons are just plain great. I don't know how we got by without these.

As Daffy said in "Stupor Duck": Couldn't they find a better place to put a building?