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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’
Director: Bernard Brown
Release Date: January 27, 1934
Rating: ★★
Review:
Mid-1933 Harman and Ising had quit with Leon Schlesinger after a dispute over money, leaving Schlesinger without a studio.
So Schlesinger quickly set up one at Sunset Boulevard, initially with help from sound engineer Bernard Brown and his friends. Brown even himself directed two cartoons during the studio’s chaotic starting months, of which ‘Pettin’ in the Park’ is the first.
Brown was no animator himself, and judging from this cartoon he was not much of a director, either: ‘Pettin’ in the Park’ just makes no sense. The first half is just an illustration of the song from the Warner Bros. musical ‘Gold Diggers from 1933’, featuring the familiar theme of a cop courting a babysitter (see also Fleischer’s ‘Let Me Call You Sweetheart‘ and Van Beuren’s ‘In the Park‘ (1933). The second half suddenly reports a diving contest and a swimming race between birds. Bridging the action is a cheeky little penguin – what he does in a park no-one will ever know.
There’s a surprising lack of continuity and consistency rarely seen outside the Van Beuren studio output, and the cartoon is of an appalling low quality, especially when compared to the earlier Harman and Ising output. Even worse, few of the gags come off, and none is anything near funny.
Nevertheless, even a terrible film like ‘Pettin’ in the Park’ shows that the typical Warner Bros. animation style, developed at Harman & Ising, had not been lost. It certainly helped that Schlesinger had managed to hire away some crew from his former associates. Bob Clampett, for example, who gets his first billing as an animator here. Clampett and Jack King (hired away from Disney) are clearly trying to put some pepper into the hopeless scenes. Thus despite its story atrocities, even ‘Pettin’in the Park’ displays Warner Bros. own distinct animation style, which, in 1933 was second to Disney only in quality.
Watch ‘Pettin’ in the Park’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Pettin’ in the Park’ is available on the DVD-set ‘The Busby Berkeley Collection’
Dr. Grob's Animation Review 