Scoprendo l'America

Looney Tunes version of Christopher Columbus' voyage to America with Bugs Bunny along for the ride. It's not great, folks. Mel Blanc voices Columbus with this Mario Bros. accent while turning King Ferdinand into a Mexican from the Speedy Gonzales cartoons, for some reason. Stereotyped accents don't bother me usually but here they're just distracting (and in Ferdinand's case just wrong). Queen Isabella is made to sound like Mae West or something, which is amusing at least. It's not a funny short with no memorable gags and most of the humor relying on the "that's-a spicy meatball-a" stuff from Columbus and his crew. At one point they resort to puns for laughs with a "captain's mess" joke that's just groan-worthy. On the plus side Carl Stalling's music is nice and the animation is lovely, with well-drawn characters and backgrounds and great colors. It's a pretty weak effort for the classic era, when Bugs had few misfires.

. . . will find little with which to quibble in this factual account of Chris Colombo's First Voyage to Some Island in the Eastern Atlantic Ocean. Crew mutinies, Royal Ignorance, seductive monarchs and murky motivations: It's all here, on full display, in Bugs Bunny's brief documentary, HARE WE GO. Sure, some pedantic types may grouse that Bugs omits any reference to Nina Simone and Pinto Colvig within the confines of HARE WE GO. But all good cooks, whether they're making omelets or movies, will understand that you occasionally need to exercise artistic license in not spoiling the froth with bit players such as watercress, Nina, rutabaga or Pinto. It would be goofy to do otherwise.

Obviously, "Hare We Go" is promoting the myth of Christopher Columbus's life. In reality, it's unclear whether or not Columbus was really Italian (he may have been a Spanish Jew who converted to Christianity during the Inquisition); by the time that he set sail, most people on both sides of the Atlantic had already figured out that the Earth is round (Washington Irving made up the story about him proving it round); the story about the crew trying to mutiny mostly seems to be making those at the top look good - an attack on the working class, if you will; and Columbus couldn't have discovered America if there were already people there (never mind that he initiated 500 years of genocide against the Indians). "Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong" tells the whole story.

Oh well, other than that, it's great to see Bugs Bunny's gags, as he accompanies Columbus as mascot on the trip across the ocean, and then discovers America. Another classic cartoon.