Wonderful character development!

Better Late Then Never

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

Bob Clampett's final short for Warner Bros. is a classic Bugs & Elmer cartoon. Elmer's tired of the routine they're in where he chases Bugs but never wins. So he tears up his contract and quits the cartoon! Bugs, determined to get Elmer back, invades his dreams (like Freddy Krueger) leading to some surreal and wacky imagery. The music is bouncy and cheerful. The voice work from Mel Blanc and Arthur Q. Bryan is expectedly flawless. The animation is beautiful with well-drawn characters and backgrounds and lovely Technicolor. The dream stuff is amazing. Funny gags, lines, and fourth-wall breaking makes this one any Looney Tunes fan will want to see.

Bob Clampett's final cartoon for Warner Bros. is an appropriately strange and crazy film, a fitting finale for the wackiest director the studio ever saw. 'The Big Snooze' begins unpromisingly with reused animation from an old Tex Avery short and a sequence in which Elmer Fudd quits his role as a cartoon dupe. Although the premise is strong, these early scenes are curiously ugly in both drawings and animation. However, the moment Bugs invades Elmer's dreams and splashes them with Nightmare Paint, 'The Big Snooze' becomes an absolute riot. Since the action is set in the world of dreams, Bugs is able to tear up the rulebook even more than usual. The pace and quality of the wisecracks increase immeasurably and the cartoon goes from ugly to positively sumptuous to look at. The jokes in 'The Big Snooze' are all extremely unconventional, with the closest to a traditional gag being an extreme reading of the old "walk this way" joke. Oddly enough, the cartoon reverts to being bizarrely unattractive the moment the dream sequence ends. Just look at Bugs as the iris closes on him at the end. Nevertheless, 'The Big Snooze' will always be remembered for the dream sequence rather than the clunky sequences that bookend it. While it doesn't quite rival Clampett's very best work, 'The Big Snooze' ends the man's career with Warners on a strikingly inventive note.

'The Big Snooze (1946),' a Looney Tunes short directed by Robert Clampett, is basically seven minutes of cultural references: the title is derived from Howard Hawks' classic Bogart-Bacall film-noir, 'The Big Sleep (1946),' and there are throwaway mentions of Bette Davis, Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello, Damon Runyon and Mr. Jack L. Warner himself. The film's premise, in some eerie twist of Einstein's space-time continuum, even appears to reference Freddy Krueger and 'A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984),' though greater minds than mine could undoubtedly arrive at a more sensible conclusion. The opening sequence was recycled from the 1941 Bugs Bunny cartoon, 'All This and Rabbit Stew (1941),' with Elmer Fudd substituted for the black hunter from that film. 'The Big Snooze' wanders quite aimlessly through its scenario, but the idea itself is clever enough to last the total running time. As usual, Mel Blanc voiced the wabbit, but Arthur Q. Bryan (uncredited) is responsible the characterisation of Fudd.In a shrewdly self-referential twist on the usual formula, Elmer, after being outsmarted by the mischievous Bugs for the last time, angrily tears up his Warner Bros. contract and decides to spend the rest of his days fishing. Fearing for his own career, Bugs attempts to frighten Elmer back into acting, and does so by entering into his dreams and systematically turning them into a string of terrifying nightmares, plagued by horrific armies of annoying "wabbits." With the realisation that retirement isn't quite as peaceful as he'd anticipated, Elmer promptly returns to the film set and accepts that it is simply his duty to be consistently suckered by a rascally rabbit. Just as the classic 'Duck Amuck (1954)' derived humour from its self-referential nature, Clampett's film {ironically enough, the last that he made for Warner Bros.} has some fun with the conjecture that Elmer Fudd is a contracted actor on the studio's payroll. The dream sequence is colourful, chaotic and suitably threatening, and Bugs appears to get a lot of enjoyment from tormenting the hapless little hunter.

I own the compilation that 'The Big Snooze' is featured on. From the get go....the stand alone cartoon seems pretty much like any of the other Bugs Bunny 'toons. Fudd chases 'wabbit'....wabbit makes him look like a sucker....and so on so forth. Until....Elmer has finally decided he's had enough. At first....seems Elmer is going to finally be free. Or so he thinks. After all....as Bugs put it....'think of your career. And for dat matter think of my career.' From there it just goes into the category of just plain silly. The 'nightmare paint' and the other touches bringing a surreal sense to the whole thing. And then there was 'da Super Chief!' Not to mention the book....aptly titled '1001 Arabian Nightmares.' And of course....what would a cartoon like this with that 'wascally wabbit' be without some clever misdirection from the craziest hare in the world....thereby allowing him to run amok. Elmer after stopping [Why did 'she' stop?] : 'Have any of you girls ever had an experience like this?' Oh sure Elmer....you should've known better when that rabbit set you up by skewing your expression of [surprise] anger over being the 'fall guy' once again. Of course if you had....the cartoon would've been ruined. And to think what we would've missed along the way if you had stayed retired. All in all....not to be missed. If you can find the compilation tape still. 'Bugs vs Elmer.'