What a waste of my time!!!

A Brilliant Conflict

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Bob Clampett's final short for Warner Bros. is a classic Bugs & Elmer cartoon. Elmer's tired of the routine they're in where he chases Bugs but never wins. So he tears up his contract and quits the cartoon! Bugs, determined to get Elmer back, invades his dreams (like Freddy Krueger) leading to some surreal and wacky imagery. The music is bouncy and cheerful. The voice work from Mel Blanc and Arthur Q. Bryan is expectedly flawless. The animation is beautiful with well-drawn characters and backgrounds and lovely Technicolor. The dream stuff is amazing. Funny gags, lines, and fourth-wall breaking makes this one any Looney Tunes fan will want to see.

If you want to see a wacky Bugs Bunny cartoon featuring wild animation and fast-paced energy that never lets up, watch "The Big Snooze". Directed by Robert Clampett, this cartoon pits the scwewy wabbit against his most famous nemesis - Elmer Fudd. Fudd finally tires of hunting & chasing Bugs, so he tears up his contract with Warner Bros. and decides to go fishing. But if Bugs has no Fudd to play off of, then there's no team! Oh no, Bugs ain't gonna let THAT happen! Highlights: Bugs is hilarious at the beginning of this cartoon as he pleads with Elmer not to break up the act. Carl Stalling's music score cleverly aids Bugs' act of throwing nightmare paint onto Elmer's peaceful dream, followed by "The rabbits are coming, / Hooray, hooray! / The rabbits are coming, / Hooray, hooray!", etc. In order to escape the wolves, Bugs convinces Elmer to run away and dance in some fairly unorthodox ways, again aided by Stalling's score. (In fact, listen to the entire music score for this film and you'll surely be able to pick out various melodies that are familiar.) "The Big Snooze" is a terrific cartoon that just happened to be director Bob Clampett's swan song before he left Warner Bros. That's too bad, because one can only wonder what other wacky creations Clampett could have made had he decided to remain at WB.

If you thought that Bob Clampett had gone as far out of normalcy as possible with "Porky in Wackyland" and "The Great Piggy Bank Robbery", then check out "The Big Snooze". When Elmer Fudd - tired of always Bugs Bunny always embarrassing him - tears up his Warner Bros. contract, Bugs does something that I wouldn't even imagine him (of all people) doing: he invades Elmer's dreams, creating one of the most surreal sequences that I've ever witnessed. Who would have ever guessed that Bugs Bunny was Freddy Krueger's forebear?! Above all, it's a good thing that I first saw this cartoon now, when I'm old enough to fully understand what it portrays (not to mention that I know who Bette Davis was). Had I watched this when I was six or somewhere thereabouts, I would have naively laughed at it without realizing what the gist was; or it might have scared me. As Looney Tunes screenwriter Michael Maltese said in an interview: "We wrote cartoons for grownups, that was the secret." But overall, this is a really cool cartoon. Bob Clampett, during the approximately one decade that he worked with the Termite Terrace crowd, created a body of work beyond what I could have ever conceived of. I recommend it.

'The Big Snooze' is a surreal sequence inside a dream of Elmer Fudd. After Bugs Bunny is too smart for him once again Elmer wants to quit from Mr. Warner and shreds his contract. He says he will be fishing from now on and he will never try to catch a rabbit again. Bugs begs him to go on since it is also his career that can come to and end.Elmer falls asleep against a tree and Bugs sees that he is dreaming. Bugs makes himself dreaming and in his own dream he enters Elmer's dream. He changes that dream into a nightmare with all the surreal images as a result.The cartoon is interesting for its story and sometimes the animation but for simple entertainment it is not very good. The beginning is nice but too predictable and the idea of going into another one's dream is good as well but it feels like there are a lot of missed opportunities. There a couple of laughs so watching this is not completely wasting time.