Some good cartoons in here but there are much better ways to see them that this messy presentation
3 May 2004
In a three-act presentation, Bugs Bunny presents some old stories in a modern film. Act I sees Yosemite Sam deep in Hell with Satan. His only way out is to replace himself with another victim - and he picks Bugs bunny. Satan lets him out of Hell for several attempts to capture Bugs. In act II we see crime waves at a new high and Elegant Mess (Bugs) trying to stop the activities of mobster Rocky. In act III, the Oswald Awards (Warner Brothers gave up on trying to win an Oscar and thus made these instead) are presented to the actors who have made the most difference in the world of animation - an award that Daffy would give his beak to get.

I love the Warner Brother cartoons a great deal and will use any excuse I can get to watch the cartoons if I'm around - whether it be a hangover cure or entertaining kids when babysitting, I'll generally give them a try and find them funny. With this being a `proper' movie I felt I needed no such excuse and decided to sit and just watch it. Very quickly I realised that this cartoon was a barely concealed attempt to just show about 8 or 9 cartoons that had been edited together to roughly fit within each act. Of these cartoons, 4 or 5 are worth seeing, 1 or 2 are pretty poor and 2 are really great so, for my money, the film was just about worth watching. I have seen most of these cartoons before and my reviews are up for them on their specifics pages so I won't review them aside from my last comment, however what spoils them is the modern touches.

Most of the linking stuff is poor at best and doesn't really work. The animation is of a noticeably lower quality and it is forced to fit the cartoons they had available. The `stories' are pretty poor and it would have been much better just to do this as a sort of flashback film where the cartoons are just honestly presented rather than twisted. The cartoons are trimmed to fit the story but, worse than this, there are points where they have been undated to get rid of violence. The worst is the bit where Bugs throws a can up to shot it and ends up shooting Sam in the face - here they remove that and have him shot the can full of corks. Rubbish.

Overall this is just about worth seeing because the majority of the cartoons are enjoyable. However the presentation spoils some of them and is really stupid and disrespectful to the material. If this is your only way to see these cartoons then it is worth it but the question would be why not just go out and rent any of the dvd/video compilations that already exist and enjoy them as they were rather than as part of this last compilation.
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