Director: Robert McKimson
Release date: April 1, 1963
Stars: Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck
Rating: ★★★
Review:
In ‘The Million-Hare’ Daffy Ducks spends his holiday at Bugs’s place, watching tv. The action only starts when their two names are mentioned on tv as contestants in a ‘buddy race’: whoever gets first to the studio, wins.
What follows is a series of rather Roadrunner-like gags, in which gravity often is as much Daffy’s enemy as it were the coyote’s in the Roadrunner films. The cartoon is very talkative, but some of the gags are good. I liked Bugs’s wonderings about Daffy’s abilities.
The staging on the other hand, is often rather odd. I especially thought that the characters were a little too big on the screen several times.
Watch two excerpts from ‘The Million-Hare’ yourself and tell me what you think:
This is Bugs Bunny cartoon No. 160
To the previous Bugs Bunny cartoon: Devil’s Feud Cake
To the next Bugs Bunny cartoon: Hare-Breath Hurry
This is Daffy Duck cartoon no. 92
To the previous Daffy Duck cartoon: Fast Buck Duck
To the next Daffy Duck cartoon: Aqua Duck
‘The Million-Hare’ is available on the Blu-Ray-set ‘Bugs Bunny 80th Anniversary Edition’
Discover more from Dr. Grob's Animation Review
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Dr. Grob's Animation Review 
2 comments
Comments feed for this article
November 15, 2024 at 18:40
Tony Perodeau
There are quite a few good touches in this cartoon, more than one might expect in a 1963 release. Bill Lava crafts a sparsely orchestrated but decent version of Harry Warren’s With Plenty of Money and You over the opening titles (it’s heard again when Bugs and Daffy are in the TV studio).
Robert Gribbroek shows his attention to detail with a stack of realistically drawn TV aerials in which a couple of UHF-receiving models are seen (remarkable because UHF broadcasting was only starting to emerge from a prolonged, difficult infancy).
According to Tod Polson in The Noble Approach, Maurice Noble did uncredited work for Robert McKimson in the early 1960s. Hints of Noble’s presence are visible when Daffy is trying to get across the canyon.
This cartoon has one of the best examples of McKimson’s occasional use of moving foreground overlays when Daffy is on the scooter.
November 20, 2024 at 17:54
Gijs Grob
Thank you for your insightful additions!