The Old Grey Hare

1944
7.5| 0h8m| NR| en
Details

Failed hunter Elmer Fudd laments that he's never able to catch the rabbit (Bugs Bunny); just then a bolt of lightning strikes, and the voice of God takes him through a flash-forward to the year 2000. Elmer and Bugs, now both elderly, look back to when they first met as babies.

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Warner Bros. Cartoons

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Reviews

Phonearl Good start, but then it gets ruined
Dorathen Better Late Then Never
Myron Clemons A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.
Billie Morin This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows
Cihan "Sean Victorydawn" Vercan (CihanVercan) CONTAINS A SOURCE OF QUOTATION - This episode of Bugs and Elmer's running fight has been released as a Bugs Bunny Special in the Merrie Melodies Series on October 28, 1944. The Old Grey Hare legendarily extends Bugs and Elmer's endless conflict into a lifelong adventure. We're first introduced to Gran'Pappy Bugs and Old Man Fudd in the year 2000, then to Baby Bugs and Baby Elmer both crawling whilst wearing diapers in Gran'Pappy Bugs's memory. Neither Bugs nor Elmer ever once appears in their usual form.-(1)It's all part of Bob Clampett's general technique of piling absurdity atop absurdity, in what is one of his greatest Bugs Bunny cartoon. It's his ability to stretch the character, the extremity of the age range provided by this single cartoon being all Bugs really needs to give us a full perspective on his being, a sense of his living a total life. Even in old age, we learn, Bugs is more active and spry than most teenagers. It's also part of a general pattern of formula reversal that had been at work since 'The Hare-Brained Hypnotist' in 1942, providing turnabouts, parodies, off-the-wall interpolations, unlikely variations on any established theme; whatever it took to avoid staleness and redundancy(1). - When put in a logical time line, this episode can be considered as being the last of Elmer and Bugs Bunny series; though it was belong to the earlier episodes practically.Personally I find Old Grey Hare somewhat scary. From my childhood memory, I remember that one time in Disney's Duck Tales, the elderly Donald Duck 'Scrooge McDuck' was going forward to his future in a nightmare. Also, in Alvin's Future episode from 'Alvin and the Chipmunks' Alvin was having incubuses of himself becoming poor, becoming extremely fat and getting old. Those 3 were the scariest cartoons I ever watched. What makes Old Grey Hare scary is especially the final scene, in which Elmer buries himself alive into the grave Bugs has dug for him; and we go into the grave with him. The framing look of his grave when he's in it, and the aspect of the sky underground was beyond belief! For anybody from all ages The Old Grey Hare is a must-see.(1): Fifty Years and Only One Grey Hare(1990) by Joe Adamson, pg:132, Henry Holt and Company New York
ccthemovieman-1 Wow, this was a strange feeling to watch this cartoon near the end of 2007. The animated short was made almost 65 years ago and deals with Elmer Fudd being transported by God to the future: the year 2000, which probably seemed far, far away to audiences in the theater back then. Now, here we are almost another decade later.Anyway, Elmer suddenly finds himself "all winkled" and "gway," still in his hunter's outfit and sitting under a tree. He sees a newspaper headline that claims "Smellovision Replaces Television." Hey, I've seen today's programs and that prediction has pretty much come true!Even better is when Bugs pops out of his hole nearby and has a white goatee - hey, he's in style!!! Who knew back in 1944? "What's up, prune face?" he asks old-man Elmer.Bugs may need a cane to walk with his bad hip and limp, but he's still a wise-guy. Mel Blanc voicing Bugs as an old man is a hoot, too.Time is reversed in the second half of the cartoon when Bugs - supposedly on his death bed - relives old times with Elmer, beginning when the latter was baby crawling along the ground with diapers and a popgun, looking for "Bugsy."
Lee Eisenberg On this, what would have been Mel Blanc's 99th birthday, I wanted to talk about one of his many accomplishments as a voice artist. In the Termite Terrace crowd's first look into the future - preceding "Duck Dodgers in the 24 1/2 Century" - the unseen God takes Elmer Fudd into the 21st century to see whether or not he can ever catch Bugs Bunny. I just found it neat to see what they expected the 21st century to look like. For example, Smellevision makes television obsolete (but Carl Stalling denies that it'll work). Surely we can forgive these various predictions for not envisioning the Internet or anything like that.So, while the most important part may be the memory of the first time that Elmer chased Bugs when they were infants, my favorite part was seeing their joke prediction. So I consider "The Old Grey Hare" worth seeing. Available in the documentary "Bugs Bunny Superstar".Smellevision. It sounds kind of like John Waters's use of Odorama in "Polyester".
Rikichi I have gone on record as not being the biggest fan of Robert Clampett. He repeats a lot of corny gags that didn't really bear repeating, some of his animation had the tendency to become too rubbery, but what I most objected to was actually not a failing of his own, but a sort of tribute, as dozens of animators that followed trying to emulate him most often accentuated his bad traits at the expense of his genius. Ah, that's the rub! How can you copy genius?This cartoon was one of those masterpieces Clampett created while he was at Warner Bros. We've all seen a hundred cartoons (my exaggerate - he he) where they show characters in infancy to old age, but never has anyone captured the brilliance of this one. As Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd go to the year 2000, the chase is on with a space age type rifle, and when we see them as infants, the chase was on even then with a popgun.Like I said, I'm not a huge fan of Clampett's, but all animation lovers have to be indebted to those works he directed at WB that even today (especially today) are high water marks for anyone in this medium.