(Warner Bros. Home Entertainment provided me with a free copy of the Blu-ray I reviewed in this Blog post. The opinions I share are my own.)
The Flintstones and Tom and Jerry are fine for a dose of nostalgia, but there’s a reason that Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies are timeless: they are still really, really funny. No other cartoons of their era packed such a wallop of anarchy, imagination, and wild one liners.
The most memorable lines spewed from the buck-toothed grin of Bugs Bunny. Bugs could be sarcastic, salacious, or just plain screwy, but he was always hilarious. There was tremendous variety in the situations and the ways Tex Avery, Robert McKimson, Friz Freling, Bob Clampett, or Chuck Jones depicted him, but the wabbit was invariably puncturing pomposity and annihilating authority. I started showing Bugs Bunny cartoons to my son when he was still in diapers to help him develop a healthy spirit of rebellion and an unhealthy sense of humor. His hankering for carrots was an unintended side effect.
