It had been a while since Warner Bros. had produced an all-new Looney Tunes cartoon. While all of the attention accorded to the studio in 1992 was on Batman: The Animated Series, another icon made his return.
In a parody of the sci-fi classic, "Invasion of the Body Snatchers", Bugs Bunny (voiced by Jeff Bergman) has to deal with crude dopplegangers of Elmer Fudd, Daffy Duck, & Yosemite Sam (all also voiced by Bergman) in "Invasion of the Bunny Snatchers", which also pokes a little fun at the conventions of Looney Tunes tradition to explain how Bugs has so many homes.
The producers get minus points for a brief Clutch Cargo moment with Daffy's clone, even if it was for a few seconds. As noted in the beginning of this 11 minute piece, "Invasion" was produced in part in New York as well as at WB's Burbank studios. Makes one wonder if there were any post-production issues that were somehow unresolved before release.
Rating: B-.
4 comments:
I caught this on CN a few weeks ago. It wasn't a bad tribute to the classic Looney Tunes shorts but it felt like a retread.
It was like the writers/animators were "tracing" the art and gags of the old shorts and trying to make it work in the present. Some things worked (The decline of animation joke in the 2D dopplegangers, the ET joke), others didn't. You get the feeling you've seen and heard this toon before.
Plus, there was no explanation for why the dopplegangers appeared or how Bugs would come to the conclusion that getting rid of them would lead to the return of the originals. One would think either the dopplegangers got rid of the originals (as Bugs' double tried to do), or perhaps the originals were in hiding or imprisoned.
I do give credit to Jeff Bergman for doing the voicework. He did a great job with all of the characters and I think even Mel Blanc would have approved.
Yeah. Clocking in at just over 11 minutes perhaps wasn't enough time to fully explain the plot, such as it was. I think they were expecting people to figure out what was up before Bugs did, but they should've fleshed out the story a little bit more.
Up until I posted this, I had only seen this in its entirety maybe once on CN. Other viewings usually were in the middle of the story. They did recycle music previously composed by Milt Franklyn & Carl Stalling, which lends to your point about this being a bit of a retread.
The dopplegangers, as we saw with Bugs' double, hatched from those carrots, but what they did with Sam, Daffy, & Elmer was left off, which was a big mistake.
I can't help but wonder if the whole thing was originally conceived to be a nightmare for Bugs, and when he woke up, everything was supposed to be as it was.
Which begs one to wonder that if the plot got all messed up, how did this see the light of day after all?
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