Review: 'Looney Tunes Collector's Vault-Volume 3'

Looney Tunes shorts have been repackaged and repackaged on DVD and Blu-ray, and it can be a real task trying to make sense of the various golden collections, platinum collections, showcase collections, spotlight collections,  collector's choice collections, and on and on. There's a lot of overlap, although many of these sets will also draw in fans of animated wise-assery because they offer some unique cartoons. 

Looney Tunes Collector's Vault-Volume 3series apparently fits into this continuum of animated wise assery by offering one disc of shorts totally new to disc and one of those making their Blu-ray debut. This means those first discs tends to consist of fairly obscure shorts while the second ones lean more towards classics with your Bugs Bunnies, Daffy Ducks, and other top-tier loonies. 

The first disc of the latest and third volume of the Collector's Vault series does feature several stars, but it's easy to see why it took so long for most of these shorts to get reissued. There's practically a "let's mock Native Americans!" theme to the disc, not to mention a rare appearance of the racist caricature Bosko. Perhaps this selection of previously suppressed shorts was intended to let the right-wing creeps who currently run Paramount, and are in the process of swallowing up Warner Brothers, know that the water is warm. Otherwise, the shorts on Disc One tend toward the archaic rather than the anarchic. There are really only a couple of excellent shorts on this disc: "Trick or Tweet" and "Don't Axe Me", featuring a very rare appearance by Mrs. Fudd.

Fortunately, Disc Two is not an additional scoop of hopelessly dated curiosities; it's a home for terrific, freshly restored toons. All of the stars are represented, and by classic cartoons: Bugs ("Foxy by Proxy", "Rabbit's Kin"), Daffy ("Hollywood Daffy", Conrad the Sailor"), Elmer Fudd ("Stage Door Cartoon"), Porky Pig ("My Favorite Duck"), Pepe Le Pew ("Really Scent"), Yosemite Sam ("Mutiny on the Bunny"). Thee's even one in which the whole gang get involved ("A Star Is Bored"), as well as a couple of true classics that don't need any star power at all ("Holiday for Shoestrings" and "I Got Plenty of Mutton"). And to balance the dodgy racism on display throughout much of Disc One, Disc Two allows both Daffy and Bugs to have a go at Nazis, which should displease the right wingers to no end. 

The quality of cartoons may vary wildly from disc to disc in Looney Tunes Collector's Vault-Volume 3, but the presentation is incredibly consistent. Colors pop, damage is nowhere to be seen, and grain is natural and never overwhelming. Each of these cartoons looks amazing.