Great Film overall

Good start, but then it gets ruined

Best movie of this year hands down!

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Wagner is the composer - does anyone know the orchestra? Was this played straight through by a house orchestra or taken from a recording and edited? It is a mish mash of different Wagner opera pieces. Its fingerprint sounds like the Berliner Philharmoniker; specifically in Tannhauser... Can anyone confirm? And year of musical recording?

. . . to under seven minutes in WHAT'S OPERA, DOC? That's right, when the Warner people took ALL of Dick's screeching marathons and extracted to Anti-Semitism, they were left with 6 minutes, 53 seconds of material that was suitable for American audiences. Yet these seven minutes match the quality of the "Sorcerer's Apprentice" segment from Disney's original FANTASIA feature cartoon, and surpass the rest of FANTASIA's padding. WHAT'S OPERA, DOC? resonates particularly with my family, since we had an adult relative who wove his own "Wild Weasel" Mythos around the "Ride of the Valkyries" song. Instead of Elmer Fudd singing, "Kill the Wabbit, kill the Wabbit, kill the Wabbit," as he chases Bugs Bunny here, our relative would sing, "Chase the toddlers, chase the toddlers, chase the toddlers, Weasels attack!" as our young ones ran for their lives under a sun setting across Sunday Lake. I don't recall much lightning striking then, as in WHAT'S OPERA, DOC?'s tragic finale, and certainly there were not any earthquakes--or, Heaven forbid!--"Smog!" which Elmer uses to effect the "Wabbit's" demise.

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?"

I cannot even find the words to describe the greatness of this cartoon. It is officially listed as the greatest cartoon ever, and it darn well deserves it. As I have said, it was simply beautiful. The elegance and detail that went into it surpasses that of anything I've ever seen. Everything from the lightning storm to the end gag was breathtaking. Chuck Jones is the Einstein of animation direction, without a doubt. It was also hilarious, not the laugh-out-loud hilarious of other great Bugs Bunny cartoons, but with subtle irony and ridiculousness ("Kill the Wabbit! Kill the Wabbit!"). The sensitivity astounds me, it's a metaphor of the whole Elmer/Bugs scene, the subconscious trust and dependency they have in each other beautifully represented by the ballet, and love song, and the consequences of Elmer's short-sightedness and Bugs' naivety tragically displayed in the finale. The little touches, like the intricately designed ballet scene, the tension of the helmet falling down the stairs, and the chilling image of the dress floating behind Bugs as he flees vainly from his doom, all accompanied by musical gags, timing, and style that has only been contested by my favorite "The Rabbit of Seville", sets off the scenes perfectly. The ending was for sure the crowning point of the whole cartoon, the sequence of the terrible lightning attack, Bugs' limp, crumpled corpse in the midst of the splintered mountain, (one of the greatest moments of animation history), Elmer's "Poor wittle wabbit" mourning, and, too top it all, the magnificent finale of Elmer carrying Bugs through the golden radiance to Valhalla, and, inevitably, Bugs' last quip, tops off this exquisite expression of greatness. This is also, I believe, the only cartoon tragedy I have ever seen, Bugs DOES die, the wabbit IS finally killed by Elmer, while Bugs did not do anything to deserve it it: the very definition of a tragedy. And yet, Bugs does not "lose", Elmer gets his comeuppance, the guilt of killing him, and his character break of "well, what did you expect in an opera, a happy ending?" still asserts that even his own death cannot defeat the great rabbit. He is a god, the Trickster god, and although mortal, cannot be beaten. There has never been, and will never be, another cartoon like this one.