So here I sit, in my new married home. It has US cable TV and I am enjoying channel surfing.
The new Looney Tune show is on Cartoon Network. It is not half-bad. The visual quality is high, and the voices are nice. But Buggs is throwing punches at the cowboy guy? That is quite out of character.
Your thoughts?
Oh! New Roadrunner cartoons too!
I caught an episode a couple of weeks ago, and I wasn’t that impressed. It could’ve been just that episode. From the episode I saw, it appeared all the characters lived together, which I thought was weird. Also, Daffy’s voice was really off. Other than that, I don’t remember much. I’ll keep an eye out for it though.
When did Bugs Bunny get neutered?
Well, first off, I am not the artistic type. I prefer to give artists a loose leash as I have very little taste. We ought to encourage experiment with old forms.
That being said, the Roadrunner cartoon was strange. It was in mock 3-D, making cultural reference to Matrix. But most importantly, Roadrunner counterattacked the coyote. These cartoons are quite violent and I suspect that might be a sign of poor writing.
Since when has a Road Runner cartoon not been violent? If you’re talking about the ninja-style cartoon, however, that’s the only one of the new ones in which the Road Runner has directly counter-attacked Wile E. Most of the others have been in the vein of the classic ones. Wile E. orders some kind of contraption from Acme that backfires on him, or he steals an unattended rocket car or motorcycle and is tripped up by his own overconfidence or the failure of the equipment to operate according to his expectations.
Pretty weak. This is essentially a sitcom inhabited, rather pointlessly, by derivations of the classic LT characters. It’s closer to Friends than to Golden Age cartoons.
As static drawings they aren’t the worst renditions of the characters ever seen, and while the voices are not very good, they’re not awful.
But the settings, the stories, the jokes, and the animation are pretty bad, from what I’ve been able to sit through. There’s really no inherent reason for these shows to be “Looney Tunes,” or even cartoons. It’s just… television. Dopey, not looney.
The reruns of the classics are far more worth your time.
Right, Wile E. was always getting caught in his own traps, while the Roadrunner just ran, ate bird seed and went “Meep, meep!” That was in Chuck Jones’ character description, that the Coyote was continually the victim of his own folly.
But I have no problem with current day references. The classics were filled with current day references as well.
Guess I’m in the minority but I think this latest incarnation is great. The voices all sound fine to me. More importantly the core characters are all still the same, they’ve just made them more fleshed-out and realistic and adult.
Daffy is Bugs’ slacker, freeloading friend. Speedy is a shrewd Mexican restaurant owner. Yosemite Sam lives in the suburbs next door to them but he’s got an ‘off-the-grid’ survivalist bent to him (I loved that). The Tasmanian Devil doesn’t talk Frankenstein-style, he’s just a wild (and truly scary & dangerous) animal.
All in all I think this is the best version of them since the 40s. By the 50s they got stodgy and lost their edge. From the late 60s on they were just pale, sad, low-budget TV versions of themselves (worse than nothing I think). The mid-80s & 90s saw the Tiny Toons renaissance, which was good & bad. The good being Animaniacs, Pinky & The Brain, Freakazoid etc. The bad being, well, Tiny Toons themselves were pretty commercial, lifeless and gay.
This latest version has ditched silly cartoon violence and instead concentrated on the characters’ interactions and relationships. Works for me.
Can’t say I like the new 3D Roadrunner & Coyotes much. The 3D is just annoying and the toons themselves skew too young.
Well, they don’t suck. June Foray is still alive and still playing Granny. Jeff Bergman does most of the voices (Bugs, Daffy, Sylvester, Tweety, Foghorn Leghorn). He was the first actor to recreate Mel Blanc’s classic voices and it’s good hearing him again. Maurice LaMarche does a perfect Yosemite Sam and Kristen Wiig is hilarious as Lola. And of course, Bob Bergen and Billy West are in the mix as Porky and Elmer, so I think they have a good crew doing the voices.
But what’s up with Bugs’ coloration, anyway? He looks lavender.
Not bad.
Could use a little more energy, a little less Valium, but pretty good.
It is one of those rare shows that my son (aged 3.5 years) likes and I like. So I consider that a win. Plus, “mall pants” cracks me up…
It’s occasionally entertaining, but it’s pretty mediocre compared to other modern cartoons like Adventure Time, Regular Show, or Gumball. If it didn’t have the Looney Tunes franchise behind it, it would already be headed for the dumpster.
I got a good laugh at him yelling at the school bus driver because of the “How many kids do you have to have before you think you’ve got a family?” crack. (He seems to be a bit of a bigot. Not sure if many kids will pick up on that.)
The few times I’ve caught it I haven’t been impressed whatsoever.
But then again I’m a purist, so it’s only the classics for me.
I found it quite entertaining. I was absolutely riveted by Granny’s tale of what she did in WWII. I’ll watch it again.