Baton Bunny (1959)

Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

As Good As It Gets

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

. . . of Bugs Bunny's problems as he conducts a symphony orchestra playing Franz Von Suppe's "Morning, Noon, and Night in Vienna." Bugs' venue is an outdoor amphitheater. Bugs chooses his conducting baton with greater care (and from a bigger selection) than a wand-shopping Harry Potter. Remembering to chalk its tip, Bugs waves his baton. The concert seems to get off on the right note (though two minutes of BATON BUNNY have passed by this point). However, between having his dress shirt self-destruct and being buzzed multiple times by a pesky fly, Bugs' conducting is so erratic that ALL of the concert goers have exited by the final chord. Only the fly is left to applaud. I once attended a Major League Baseball Game that suffered such a plague of flying insects that the stands were nearly as empty as Bugs' concert bowl by the end of the Seventh Inning Stretch. But baseball is best enjoyed outdoors (unless you're talking about the Tampa Bay Rays, in which case it cannot be enjoyed at all). On the other hand, concerts should be an indoor activity, as BATON BUNNY more than proves.

Bugs is the guest conductor of the Warner Brothers Symphony Orchestra, playing "Morning, Noon and Night in Vienna by Franz Von Suppe."The whole cartoon is a spoof of overly-dramatic conductors. Bugs exaggerates most of his moves with the orchestra delivering what he's doing. Some of it is funny, some too far- fetched, but that was the idea. Also, the music cleverly also was in sync with little things happening to Bugs' apparel as it fell off here and there, giving him problems. In all, this short is more clever than it is funny. It's definitely a unique one for Bugs Money and I give them an "A" for originality but a "D" for laughs. Since most of us watch these animations for laughs, clever-or-not this was not up to par.

After the Termite Terrace crowd had used classical music to great effect in "A Corny Concerto", "Rhapsody Rabbit", "Back Alley Oproar", "Long-Haired Hare", "Rabbit of Seville" and "What's Opera, Doc?", it came out a little flat in "Baton Bunny". This short has Bugs Bunny conducting an orchestra while his suit keeps going awry and a fly keeps getting in his way. The cartoon's not terrible, but it seems like they should have had accomplished more; then again, maybe they'd done everything that they could with classical music by this point. OK in a pinch. Available on Disc 3 of the Golden Collection, where it's placed among far better cartoons.So who exactly is this Suppe guy?

Not every Bugs Bunny cartoon can be a classic, and this one isn't. Not bad, but a mediocre effort. The video (probably out of print as I write this) called "Overtures to Disaster" uses "Baton Bugs" as a framing device for 2 Bugs classics, "Rabbit of Seville" and "What's Opera, Doc", plus a few other good sequences, which highlights the difference in quality levels better than I could possibly describe in words.