TrueHello
Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.
InformationRap
This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.
Sabah Hensley
This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama
phantom_tollbooth
Chuck Jones's '8 Ball Bunny' is a terrific sequel to the excellent 'Frigid Hare'. It's the second of two shorts which feature a cute character who came to be known as Playboy Penguin. A mute baby penguin dressed in top hat and bow-tie, Playboy is a great character whose cuteness is played up for exaggerated laughs, unlike Friz Freleng's sickening cutification of Tweety, which was mostly played for unsuccessful "awwwwws"! 'Frigid Hare' had played out as a traditional chase film with Bugs defending the penguin from a grotesque Eskimo stereotype. '8 Ball Bunny' widens the scope, presenting us with an epic road movie in which Bugs must travel across half the globe in order to return the penguin to the South Pole. Along the way he gets into numerous scrapes and continuously encounters a caricature of Humphrey Bogart in 'The Treasure of the Sierra Madre'. Although it was probably a wise choice to retire Playboy Penguin after just two appearances, both the cartoons that feature him are brilliant and, with its epic adventure story, '8 Ball Bunny' stands out as the best of the two.
slymusic
Written by Michael Maltese and directed by Chuck Jones, "8 Ball Bunny" is quite an unusual Bugs Bunny cartoon. Bugs has such a large heart that his conscience forces him to help a shy little penguin return to his antarctic home, all the way from Brooklyn! Of course, upon traveling southward with his little companion, Bugs gets himself in all kinds of physical peril! Highlights: Several times in this cartoon we see a clever caricature of Humphrey Bogart as the down-on-his-luck Fred C. Dobbs character from "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" (1948), asking Bugs Bunny for some spare change. The penguin takes delight in seeing Bugs physically defeating a big ravenous galoot on the southbound train. While on a South American island, Bugs wears some cheap clothing and adopts a humorous accent as he strums a guitar and sings a song about his predicament with the penguin."8 Ball Bunny" is a very good cartoon that shows the more humane qualities of Bugs Bunny. He may at times be annoyed at the poor, innocent little penguin, but he has the sheer determination to get him home.
Robert Reynolds
This is a very good Bugs Bunny short which illustrates that no good deed goes unpunished. Because I want to touch on several details, this is a spoiler warning: This short opens with the star attraction of an ice show, a penguin, being left behind, trying to catch up to the truck and winding up falling into Bug's hole and disturbing an honest rabbit's slumber. At the sight of the penguin in tears, Bugs promises to get him home-a promise he'll have repeated cause to regret for the rest of the short.They hop a freight, where a hobo looks at the penguin and observes that "Penguins is practically chickens" and starts planning the dinner menu. Bugs gets rid of him with some balletic moves which would earn him an audition with the ABT.Bugs puts his charge on the Admiral Byrd, provisioned with "some ice cubes you can munch on the way", only to later discover that the ship is bound for Brooklyn. He swims to the ship in time to find that the poor little guy is once again viewed with an eye toward the culinary. Bugs rescues him once again and they set off on a series of adventures.The highlights of this section for me include Bugs playing a guitar and singing a calypso song while the penguin labors with an ax to hollow out a tree to fashion a crude boat and a scene where our heroes are in a boiling pot surrounded by singing and dancing natives (this time, they're both on the menu). Both scenes are punctuated by the running gag-Humphrey Bogart as Fred C. Dobbs from The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, uttering the immortal line, "Could you help out a fellow American who's down on his luck?", which happens several times.After several gags and a montage, Bugs finally gets the penguin to the South Pole, only to learn that he's not from the South Pole, causing Bugs to throw a fit. The closing gag is hilarious, so I won't spoil it here.This short is available on the Looney Tunes Golden Collection, Volume 4 and is well worth seeing. Recommended.
PeachHamBeach
If you're a bird lover like me, that is. Otherwise, he's pretty cute, but kind of ditzy. A professional ice skater, this little bird is accidentally left behind when the Ice Frolicks leave town, and he appeals to Bugs to help him find his way "home". Unfortunately, Bugs' only source of info is an encyclopedia and he assumes that this little pen-guin is from The South Pole.The two endure many misadventures, running into Humprey Bogart several times along the way!!! The tears that turn into ice cubes really get to me. I don't know why, it's only a cartoon...but they do. The same little bird starred in the earlier BB cartoon, "Frigid Hare".
