User Reviews

Love animation, it was a big part of my life as a child, particularly Disney, Looney Tunes, Hanna and Barbera and Tom and Jerry, and still love it whether it's film, television or cartoons. Actually appreciate it even more now through young adult eyes, thanks to broader knowledge and taste and more interest in animation styles and various studios and directors.

Chuck Jones deserved, and still deserves, to be considered one of the best, most legendary and most influential animation directors/animators. While not quite as distinctive in directing style as other directors from the same era, in his prime era he was responsible for some of the best cartoons ever made. Bugs Bunny is one of my favourite characters in animation and ever, he and Elmer Fudd are such a classic pairing and Mel Blanc was one of the greatest voice actors ever.

'Portrait of the Artist as a Young Bunny' is not a terrible cartoon by any stretch. It's also not very good either, another one of those watchable but not particularly inspired 80s Looney Tunes efforts.

Certainly there are good things. The animation has brightness and colour with some inventive moments, if not always refinement with some of the drawing scrappy. The music is lively enough and doesn't sound too cheap.

Bugs is always worth watching, and that's an understatement, and he is still interesting and not out of character. A few amusing lines of dialogue and lively chemistry, especially agreed the sequence/exchange regarding being offered wine, and Mel Blanc shows voicing Bugs that he has definitely not lost it.

However, there is nothing new here despite a fairly neat concept and not much is amusing let alone funny, nothing is imaginative either. The gags feel stale and the timing has very little energy, fatigue and lack of inspiration is all over here. Still love Blanc as Bugs but with him voicing Elmer it just isn't the same without Arthur Q. Bryan.

Elmer is not as interesting as he usually is and his chemistry with Bugs has sparkled far more in the cartoons when Looney Tunes were in their prime. Some drawing is scrappy and the whole cartoon is far too talky with nowhere near enough gags, with too much of the dialogue being nothing to write home enough this is a big problem.

Overall, not terrible but not much great here, Blanc's voice work and Bugs are the best assets. 5/10 Bethany Cox

School's out and, for some reason, adult Bugs is ecstatic about this. By the time he realizes how stupid that is, he runs into a tree and knocks himself unconscious. While out cold, Bugs dreams he's a kid again and fighting with a young Elmer Fudd. So it's basically Looney Babies. Originally part of the TV special Bugs Bunny's Bustin' Out All Over, this later effort by Chuck Jones suffers from many of the same problems that plague most of the Looney Tunes shorts made after the classic era. Namely that the jokes aren't very funny and the animation, music, and overall production is cheaper in quality. Most of the gags in this new cartoon are just reworked routines from famous Bugs & Elmer shorts, with the twist being they're kids this time. The freshest and funniest bit is where kid Bugs threatens to tell the authorities that kid Elmer offered him wine. This joke and its reaction from Elmer is the closest this cartoon gets to the kind of edge the old shorts often had. For the most part this is just an exercise in nostalgia and a pretty corny one at that. It's watchable for fans but nothing worth bragging about.

Although they've mostly worked, the cartoons done in the 1970's and after usually aren't quite as good as the older stuff (probably because budgets and cost won't allow the same freedom). This one and a few others are the exception. I put this one above the two most notable others (The Duxorsist and Duck Dodgers and the Return of the 24th and a 1/2 Century) because it has some funnier lines and situations and a very funny cameo by none other than Wile E. Coyote. Chuck Jones did a marvelous job with this one and it is highly recommended.