The Bugs Bunny/Road-Runner Movie

An interesting compilation Enjoyable feature. A wonderful look on the best of Chuck Jones Probably the most entertaining of the Looney Tunes compilation films.

Skip the unctuous opening and fast-forward to the highlights: Bugs battling a bull; Daffy Duck battling an unseen animator; and the all-time great WHAT'S OPERA, DOC?, in which the usual Bugs-and-Elmer chase is done in best operatic style

Yes, the gags are somewhat repetitive: Wile E. Coyote plunges to the ground 15 times, is crushed with rocks 11 times and baits the roadrunner three times with "Free Bird Seed." In all, 10 Acme products appear in this movie, in which Bugs Bunny and other characters sport clever disguises no fewer than 12 times. There are five "wabbit season"/"duck season" face-offs. Daffy Duck gets shot 10 times.

But it never gets old. I have loved this movie since I was a little boy, and have viewed it, literally, hundreds of times. That's the genius of Chuck Jones (animator) and Mel Blanc (voices).

The many shorts featured in this compilation include Daffy's battle with an off-screen animator, Bugs fighting a bull and getting revenge on a grumpy opera singer, two intergalactic run-ins with Marvin the Martian, "What's Opera, Doc?" (which is, as Bugs describes it, "the entire 18 hours of Richard Wagner's 'Ring of Nibaloone--Nibalane--Nibalu--Nibalung' ... squashed ... down to seven minutes") and a 20-minute segment of classic roadrunner gags.

A wide selection of cartoon shorts starring most all the Warner Bros. characters and is tied together by new animation featuring Bugs Bunny talking in a large mansion. The cartoons are hit-and-miss and when they are all put together in a feature-length film the whole project borders on being down-right tedious. The title does not make a whole lot of sense either as Bugs Bunny dominates the action and The Road Runner only has one cartoon with his arch-nemesis Wile E. Coyote. Only fair. Catch the same thing on the Cartoon Network at most anytime of the day. 2.5 out of 5 stars.

Bugs Bunny (Mel Blanc) looks back upon the history of comedy itself, his own career, and the careers of his various colleagues and co-stars as he takes us on a tour consisting of a showcase of classic cartoon shorts interwoven together through a loose narrative.

The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Movie is a 1979 compilation film directed by Chuck Jones consisting of repackages of classic Looney Tunes shorts. Made for approximately $500,000, the film was a combination of original footage directed by Jones to serve as linking material between the shorts as a celebration of Bugs Bunny's then 40 year anniversary. While Warner Bros. Was initially uncertain whether or not the film would be released directly to television, the movie was given a theatrical release upon completion and while exact box office records are unavailable it did do reasonably well at Guild Theatre in New York City where it set a house record opening day. The movie in the era of streaming where the individual cartoons are widely available doesn't quite pack the punch it once did, but there is a sense of reverence and history that comes from the film that makes it worth viewing especially for Looney Tunes completionists.

The movie is framed with Bugs lounging around his luxurious mansion (a parody of Frank Lloyd Wright's "Fallingwater" house in Bear Run, Pennsylvania) wearing a smoking jacket as he takes us through the various paintings adorning the walls of his home which serve as springboards into the various cartoons interwoven into the plot. Following an amusing tongue in cheek explanation on the history of comedy that goes from the Universes origin of the big bang, to prehistoric times and eventually the silent film era, Bugs Bunny then goes through various points of history such as discussing his "many fathers" which was made by Jones as a way of rebuking Bob Clampett's claims of him having been solely responsible for Bugs Bunny's origin all the way through to Bugs Bunny regaling us with the greatest adventures with his co-stars. In a way the movie feels like you're catching up with an old friend who's telling you what you may have missed in the interim and it's a pleasant experience to say the least. The final stretch of the film is fifteen minutes of Wile E. Coyote/Road Runner shorts tied end to end from different cartoons and largely abandons the Bugs Bunny framing device as we just go from backfiring Road Runner trap to backfiring Road Runner trap and this is probably the weakest part of the film as the Wile E. Coyote cartoons while good do follow a predictable rhythm that works best in small doses and it becomes rather tiresome when it goes on for three times longer than it was intended to.

The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Movie is an interesting time capsule of a film that works as a celebratory milestone of the endearing appeal of the Looney Tunes characters and a reflection upon their storied history. Following the advent of Home Media and especially streaming making individual shorts more widely available the point of this film and others of the same genre has largely been left extinct and by the cultural wayside, but there's an endearing charm to this first film.