User Reviews

• CONTAINS A SOURCE OF QUOTATION -

At the nearest boxing stadium to Bugs Bunny's neighbourhood, he witnesses from his rabbit hole that unfair contests are being performed. When he challenges the heavyweight boxing champion, Bugs finds himself at the ring. He gets into the spirit of boxing right away, but cannot gain an advantage over the Champ; till he brings his usual sly and dodgy methods to the ring.

-(1)Bugs grabs the sportscaster's microphone and begins describing action that's not taking place, all of it so much in his favor that it wears down the Champ's resistance. "The Champ is confused," says Bugs "Bugs lands a beauty to the solar plexus!" and the Champ tries ward it off, flinching from its impact at the very thought. "The Champ is groggy!" shouts Bugs as the sportscaster, getting more feverish, making up so many 'rabbit punches' the Champ can't figure out where all the punches are coming from, and finally "The Champ is down!"(1). -

The Champ really falls down when he gets the shaft of the invisible rabbit punches. But this was just one round, and after that the Champ uses Bugs Bunny's methods till the 110th round has Bugs tied up to railway tracks, while the Champ becomes the locomotive driver that is about to mash Bugs Bunny.

How Bugs saves himself from that trouble is very unique. For a second time after he's beaten by Yosemite Sam in Hare Trigger(1945), this time the Champ beats Bugs; but only on paper(again). When the screen goes white, Bugs comes out of the side with a scissors in his hand; revealing that his ego is larger than the story writers'.

Bugs becomes his own contest sportscaster, masquerades as a doctor, pretends as a popcorn peddler, and even cuts the motion picture film he's printed on. Rabbit Punch not only offers a lot of punches, it also adds more to Bugs Bunny's unconventional methods to outpower his adversaries. This episode is available on MGM/UA video Bugs Bunny Classics(1989).

(1): Fifty Years and Only One Grey Hare(1990) by Joe Adamson, pg:146, Henry Holt and Company New York

. . . as it's a gladiator sport pairing people whose sole intent it to beat each other's brains out. Now, if we live in a World in which diminished Brain Power were a Virtue, boxing would actually make sense. But a recent survey conducted by the Ring Physicians Group (or RPG) discovered that the average pugilist lost one IQ point per fight. Since 40 bouts constitutes a typical ring career on the ropes, and 121.7 is the median Intelligence Quotient of boxing rookies, "lucky" boxers retire with an IQ in the 80 to 83 range. (Unlucky boxers die in the Ring.) This sort of mental deterioration not only bans them from driving in 18 states, but it also more than doubles the time they must spend to solve a crossword puzzle. (Though the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that most retired boxers are not eligible for the Death Penalty due to their diminished faculties, many of them might be better off taking up NFL football, as Jury Nullification exempts the NFL's Best and Brightest killers from ever facing the Needle.) Bugs Bunny skates around all of these issues during RABBIT PUNCH, before he tires of such a tawdry exercise and literally cuts this cartoon short.

Written by Tedd Pierce & Michael Maltese, and directed by Chuck Jones, "Rabbit Punch" is a fine Bugs Bunny cartoon that teams him up with a familiar burly, mean-looking prizefighter who I believe was later known as the Crusher. This film certainly has the look and the boisterous atmosphere of an outdoor nocturnal prizefight, where plenty of funny gags abound as Bugs and his gargantuan opponent are not above a fair amount of subterfuge in order to win the match.

There are a couple of scenes in "Rabbit Punch" that I think especially stand out. After Bugs dares to boo the multi-muscular palooka, Bugs makes a couple of hilarious facial expressions as he gets hoisted out of his hole, literally thrown into a dressing room and flying out wearing a pair of pink boxing trunks. While Bugs has a struggle with one of his challenger's legs, the big galoot peacefully lies onto the canvas playing solitaire, to the familiar accompaniment of Mendelssohn's Spring Song.

As with all of Bugs' larger-than-life nemeses, in "Rabbit Punch" he takes care of his opponent not with his brawn, but with his brain. Problem is, after 110 rounds, I'm still unsure as to who the winner is.