The Stupid Cupid (1944)

Powerful

Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

Absolutely brilliant

Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.

I really enjoyed The Stupid Cupid. Admittedly it is a little on the bizarre side, but it is quite funny as well. The cartoon does start off a little slow, but there is a lot that more than makes up for it. The story is simple but fairly effective. The animation is very nice, with lovely colours and good character features. The music is my favourite asset though, it was put to perfect use and quite pleasant and quirky to listen to. The dialogue particularly that of Daffy's is funny, while there are some interesting sight gags such as the cat shooting herself and we see her shooting each of her nine lives and Daffy falling in love with a chicken. Elmer's facial expressions were pretty funny too. Elmer is still dim-witted and clueless, and while he looks and sounds different(being voiced by Mel Blanc rather than Arthur Q. Bryan) he is a good foil, while Daffy is lots of fun as always.Overall, an enjoyable cartoon, not perfect but worth watching. 9/10 Bethany Cox

Frank Tashlin's 'The Stupid Cupid' is a weird cartoon which suffers from some bizarre plotting and the bad miscasting of Elmer Fudd. Elmer plays the role of Cupid, causing animals to fall in love with partners of varying appropriateness. Elmer looks horrible in this cartoon, not just because he's been redesigned as Cupid but because his poses and facial expressions are really awkwardly drawn and animated. Tashlin also makes him really annoying, largely forsaking dialogue for an annoying take on Elmer's famous laugh. The best moments of 'The Stupid Cupid' are the early scenes of different animals falling in love, including a great sequence with a horse, a notoriously difficult creature to animate, something which Tashlin makes look easy. However, when Daffy Duck enters the cartoon, suddenly it takes a downturn and ugly-Elmer is not the only problem any more. Daffy has always been my favourite cartoon character of all time but the plot he is given here is not only weak but squished into a small amount of time since much of the cartoon has already passed. Elmer has Daffy fall in love with an unsuspecting chicken, whom he pursues even more aggressively than Pepe Le Pew! There's a great sequence towards the end where Daffy begs the chicken's rooster boyfriend for mercy but it leads to an abrupt and unsatisfying ending which seems to suggest there was a climactic gag cut out. It's the final nail in the coffin for 'The Stupid Cupid', a bizarre cartoon which has one or two nice moments but is, overall, amongst my least favourite of Tashlin's shorts.

We often see images of Cupid shooting people with arrows and making them fall in love, but what if the people didn't want his arrows? That's the premise of Frank Tashlin's "The Stupid Cupid". In this case, Cupid (played by Elmer Fudd) shoots people with arrows with suction cups...and the subsequent love is more like the sort of relationships that one would expect to see in the 1970s.Anyway, when the little guy prepares to shoot Daffy Duck, Daffy resists and explains how their encounter the previous year led to Daffy's unhappy marriage and excess children (needless to say, Daffy says this at near breakneck speed). Finally, Cupid manages to shoot Daffy, and...well, let's just say that what follows is the sort of stuff that I couldn't have even predicted in a classic Warner Bros. cartoon! I just gotta wonder how much fun they must have had creating this stuff.So, while this may not have been the greatest cartoon that they made, it's certainly a hilarious one. Preceding the main plot line, there's even one of the "now I've seen everything" gags (if you're unfamiliar with these, then you'll understand it once you see the cartoon). Really funny.

This is a very funny cartoon, pitting two of the Looney Tunes stars against each other in a somewhat unusual battle of wills. Because I want to discuss some of the details of this short, this is a spoiler warning: The opening shows a very cherubic-looking Elmer Fudd, flitting around and shooting animals with arrows to make them fall in love. All goes well (at least from "Cupid's" perspective) until he comes face to face with Daffy Duck, who launches into a particularly inspired rant about his life before and after his last encounter with the arrow-aiming menace to an orderly society, which he feels ruined a carefree single life. He closes by punctuating his point, using Elmer himself to do so. Obviously, at this point, the gauntlet has been flung down.Elmer shoots Daffy and Daffy starts chasing after a very unsettled hen. Said hen is married, to a large and very disturbed rooster, who pointedly wants to know why Daffy is after HIS wife. Daffy explains to the rooster and his "charming Mrs." that his behavior is the fault of that "stupid Cupid", explains that he's also a family man-complete with a carload of his brood as evidence and generally grovels shamelessly (which is infinitely better than picking up your beak from the floor after a jealous rooster punches you into next Thursday) until the rooster allows that it might just all be an innocent misunderstanding. The rooster lets Daffy go and Daffy goes out gratefully-only to be shot by Elmer again and interpose himself between rooster and hen in the midst of their reconciliation. The visual scene here is marvelous and Daffy is in trouble again! This short is available on the Looney Tunes Golden Collection, Volume 4 and is well worth seeing-and so are all four of the Looney Tunes Golden Collections which have been released thus far. I truly hope that all of the remaining Warner Brothers shorts eventually find a home on future Golden Collections. Recommended.