What's Opera, Doc? (1957)

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

Good start, but then it gets ruined

Best movie of this year hands down!

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

I honestly think this deserved an Academy Award win but however, Birds Anonymous, one of my favorites, deserved its Oscar win. This short is very good in multiple ways. In six minutes, it manages to cover a plot, an opera parody and much more. As Warner Bros. Cartoons was entering its last few years as the original studio, this short was made. Chuck Jones, Michael Maltese, Abe Levitow and Maurice Noble's working of the short allows this film to receive a 10 in my book.

While I'm not usually a fan of Elmer Fudd, this was one of my favourite Warner Brothers' cartoons when I was a child even though at the time I had no idea that it was based on the music of Wagner.It is great seeing Elmer Fudd singing about how he is going to kill the wabbit with his spear and magic helmet before falling in love with Bugs after the latter slips into a disguise as an operatic heroine. Of course the disguise slips and Elmer summons lightning bolts to strike down the fleeing Bugs.Here Chuck Jones has given us one of the best cartoon shorts that I've seen, they certainly don't make them like this any more sadly.

Another hilarious spin on opera as Bugs and Elmer (Siegfried and Brunhilde) go through their paces with bursts of operatic grandeur until they reach the tragic conclusion. Nevertheless, Bugs raises his head and says to the audience, "What did you expect in an opera?" Dazzling combination of music and animation, it's definitely high on the chart of best animated Chuck Jones films.Synchronization of music and animation is spectacular, and the voices of Mel Blanc and Arthur Q. Bryan do much to lift the cartoon into the highest category for this sort of thing.Fun to watch, fun to listen to. Another essential from Chuck Jones.

Whenever I think of animated cartoons that truly stand out as classics, "What's Opera, Doc?" is probably the preeminent cartoon that comes to my mind. An excellent spoof of Wagnerian opera, it is one of the most well-loved and well-remembered of all Warner Bros. cartoons. If anyone ever thought there couldn't possibly be any elegance connected with an animated cartoon, they need only to watch "What's Opera, Doc?" in order to be proved wrong. Director Chuck Jones, writer Michael Maltese, layout designer Maurice Noble, orchestrator Milt Franklyn, voice artists Mel Blanc and Arthur Q. Bryan - all of these folks and numerous others knew that this cartoon would take a lot of hard work, and all their effort definitely paid off! My favorite moments from "What's Opera, Doc?" include the following (DO NOT read any further until after you have actually seen this cartoon). The opening of this film reveals some rather intimidating cliff shadows of Elmer at his most dangerous. Elmer is rather funny with his opening quiet vocalization of "Be vewy quiet. I'm hunting wabbits" and especially with his frenzied "Kill the wabbit! Kill the wabbit! Kill the wabbit!" sung to a familiar Valkyrie theme; Bugs then sings to a horn accompaniment as he casually asks Elmer what he's up to. Bugs' and Elmer's love duet (with Bugs disguised as Brunhilda) is nicely punctuated by Bugs' fluttering eyelids. The musical accompaniment momentarily breaks away from being Wagnerian as Bugs' helmet & wig disguise drops off his head and bounces down the stairs."What's Opera, Doc?" is brilliant, simply brilliant! Chuck Jones was a very educated man who knew that if you're dealing with Wagnerian opera, by gad, you'd better have a large orchestra! Mel Blanc and Arthur Q. Bryan turned out to be fairly decent singers in their respective Bugs & Elmer characterizations. The dance sequences between hunter and rabbit were authentically recreated, and the uses of light, shadow, & color are almost beyond compare. Sometimes I think it's easy to become unaware of all the hard work & effort that goes into a brief animated cartoon; when we watch the cartoon, all we see is pure art, not the actual work that went on behind the scenes. As a result of all that hard work, "What's Opera, Doc?" is now available on DVD for all of us to enjoy and appreciate its elegance. If you're a fan of the Warner Bros. cartoons, you simply cannot miss "What's Opera, Doc?"