Wise Quackers

Wise Quackers starring Daffy Duck and Elmer Fudd is an amusing cartoon, with a simple premise that does work very well. The animation is good enough, not outstanding, but it looks nice, and the music has energy. The dialogue is fresh and funny, the pace is fast and the sight gags are lively. Daffy is great here, perhaps a little too greedy, but he is funny and handles the material very well, while dim-witted yet lovable Elmer is a great foil and the voice work especially from Mel Blanc is top notch. The ending is amusing and while there is the theme of slavery there is nothing offensive about it. Overall, amusing and definitely worth seeing for fans of Daffy especially. 9/10 Bethany Cox

After watching a not-so-funny Daffy Duck in A Squeak at the Wheel, it's great to watch him in his prime in Friz Freleng's Wise Quackers. After Daffy crash lands in Elmer Fudd's field, the duck asks for his life spared in order to serve as his slave. With Elmer agreeing, Daffy ruins every attempt which should come as no surprise to anyone who knows him. Especially hilarious is his attempt to keep Fudd from being "poisoned" by eating all the food himself! As hilarious as this short is, some modern viewers might be a little disturbed by some of the stereotypical dialects Daffy uses especially of the Stepin Fetchit variety. To those viewers, the final gag should tell you which side of the slave issue this short is on...

When I recently saw "Wise Quackers", I had a wonderful time. That's because I loved watching my wife and daughter's reaction to the racial insensitivity of this 1949 cartoon. Back then, making fun of slavery and having Daffy imitate an old black slave must have worked well with audiences. Today, it just seems pretty gross...and unfunny. But their reactions...hilarious! Now I am not condoning the film, but you should have seen their reactions! Before the film became offensive, I noticed something VERY unusual for a Looney Tunes cartoon of the era--the animation of the backgrounds was simply atrocious in the opening shots. It looked like someone let their 7 year-old animate this. Ugly, that's for sure.

Now if somehow the cartoon was funny despite all this, I could perhaps give it a semi-reasonable score. Apart from the face in the towel bit, however, it just wasn't very funny. Not a lot to recommend this one.

No doubt the slavery stuff - specifically Daffy Duck acting like a Stepin Fetchit-style character - might make us cringe at "Wise Quackers" some. But as long as we understand what it's portraying, it's really funny, with filmdom's most famous member of the biological family Anatidae* falling onto Elmer Fudd's farm and begging to be his slave rather than get killed. Of course, this is an excuse for him to turn Elmer's lifestyle upside down. Probably the coolest scene is when Daffy warns Elmer that the food might be poisoned and so the slave should taste it first; although I guessed what Daffy was going to do, I didn't predict that they would play Franz Liszt's "2nd Hungarian Rhapsody" to accompany it! Of course, the Looney Tunes cartoons used that song quite often, so it's no surprise.

Anyway, a pretty funny cartoon, despite the slavery stuff.

*That's the family to which ducks belong.

This is not my very favourite Daffy Duck episode (partly due to the slightly annoying greediness of Daffy), but I really like it! I find it fun, amusing and enjoyable. Another flaw (that may bother some more than others) are slight references to American black slavery, as in the setting, which is a plantation - yet Daffy, the slave, pulls off the gags in reference to the theme of the episode in a lively and hilarious way.

Daffy, who is migrating, can fly no further and is exhausted. He falls out of the sky and lands in Elmer Fudd's plantation. As he always is, Elmer is prepared to shoot the duck, but he begs his life to be spared and even offers to be his slave instead. Elmer agrees (partly without realising it) and many clever gags and excitingly funny turns to the plot follow..!

Recommended for people who like Daffy Duck episodes that are in between old and a bit more modern and for people who will not mind slavery used for humour.

Enjoy "Wise Quackers"! :-)

P.S I have just read Tavm's sort of recent review for this episode and I TOTALLY agree with his last sentence! :-)