Title: Super-Rabbit
Studio: Warner Bros.
Date: 04/03/43
Credits:
Supervision
Charles M. Jones
Animation ... Ken Harris
Story ... Tedd Pierce
Musical Direction ... Carl W. Stalling
Series: Merrie Melodies
Running time (of viewed version): 8:12
Commercial DVD Availability: LTGCv3d4
Synopsis: Bugs gets superpowers and goes to Texas to fight a human trying to eliminate the rabbit scourge.
Comments: I always thought this cartoon was disappointing as a kid. I liked that there was a Superman parody, but it always felt crusty and old (for a WB cartoon), with a Bugs Bunny only beginning to be what I conceived of Bugs as being. I think I disliked the in and out of shot change gags too. Probably not helped by tv prints. The lab looks great. The shot presumably is meant to parody the long background pans in the Superman series. Sign gag. Bugs's power is vegetable based, like Popeye's. Fairly early basketball gag? First I think I've run into in my chronological blogs. The cartoon ends with mindless obeisance to a uniform, just like the foolish mindless cheerleading in the ball game. Bugs appears to be a Marine sergeant. The commentary says the professor is a parody of British character actor Richard Hayden (sp), voiced by Kent Rogers. It's just not really a very good parody of the Fleischer cartoons.
"Believe It Or Else" from the '39 list has the human basketball gag, so this was at least the second hoops reference in a WB short.
ReplyDeletePart of the reason I'm kind of "mehhh" on this short is for the same reason I wasn't hot on Jones' later "Hare-Breath Hurry" -- we enjoy Bugs as a character because he outsmarts his rivals, not because he has some sort of added physical advantage against his opponent (the "Bricka-Bracka" gag is funnier when it's cheerleader Bugs getting them into the rooting spirit than at the end, when Super-Rabbit blows past them and changes their clothes). Daffy's Superman parodies in "Scrap-Happy Daffy" and "Stupor Duck" play better within his basic personality, both from the 40s and 50s.