Looney Tunes fans the Looney Tunes brand has seen it's highs and it's lows over recent years and well the Bugs and the gang are back with a new series of shorts. Which like the rest of you I was really looking forward to seeing I watched alot of the previews that were released on line in the days leading up the series release and since there's a lot of episodes being released i'm doing this review in huge batches and so here is my review of the first batch of episode for "Looney Tunes Cartoon" enjoy.
Now as you'll all no doubt know this show doesn't have a plot line since its a series of shorts and as such each short will have a different plot so for example one short see's Porky and Daffy as firefighters while another would see Bugs Bunny trying to watch a baseball game. I'll admit that the set ups for each cartoon can indeed be funny but more often then not the shorts don't go all the way with the ideas behind the setups which is a shame.
Starring in the series is Eric Bauza as Bugs Bunny , Daffy Duck, Tweety , Pepé Le Pew and Marvin The Martian and Bob Bergen as Porky Pig. Also starring in the series is Jeff Bergman as Sylvester , Elmer Fudd , Foghorn Leghorn and Ralph Wolf , Fred Tatasciore as Yosemite Sam , Taz , Sam Sheepdog and Gossamer , Candi Milo as Granny and via archive audio the late Paul Julian as Road Runner.
For me the voices in this series are a very mixed bag because while alot of the voices are indeed good there are others that just don't work as well. Take for example Eric Bauza as Bugs Bunny while his performance in the show is indeed good the voice just doesn't work for me since it doesn't sound like Bugs and the same goes for Candi Milo as Granny she puts in a good performance the voice just isn't there yet and there are plenty of others that are like that which is a shame because performance wise the acting is spot on in my opinion.
Now what makes this show stand out is that there's a bunch of different animation studios working on each short film. Which for me is a good thing because it allows each studio to leave there mark on the franchise as well as show us what they can do as a studio , that being said the animation in the shorts is honestly really good heck i'd dare say that it's feature film quality that's how good the animation is in my opinion.
The animation in these shorts also gives the shorts some of that classic Looney Tunes feel in my opinion. Which while it won't be noticeable in the character animation you can defiantly notice it in the backgrounds and indeed in some of the character designs , I honestly feel that this is a good thing because it helps recapture the spirit of the original shorts something which alot of recent Looney Tunes products haven't done.
As alot of you will know this show is airing on HBO Max which is a new streaming service from Warner Bros. From what I can gather there taking the same approach that Boomerang took when they aired Wabbit / New Looney Tunes where they release a whole bunch of episodes at once which for a show that's meant to have eighty episodes makes a lot of sense instead of releasing it either all at once or in weekly instalments which would just not work for this show.
Each episode is around eleven minuets long and is made up of usually three shorts with the middle short being around thirty seconds at most and the other two being around for or six minuets each. I honestly think is the right think to do for this show since the stories that they tell but at the same time I do wish that some of the shorts where a bit longer just due to how much fun I was having watching them.
Now even tho i'm a bit of a Bugs Bunny fan I have to admit that there are far to many shorts featuring the character in this first batch of released episodes. Over half of the shorts feature Bugs and that for me is far to many since it doesn't give enough time to show us the other Looney Tunes characters , I get why there showing us a lot of Bugs Bunny cartoons because he is the mascot for the Looney Tunes franchise but there's only so many times you can see him up against Elmer Fudd before you get bored watching it.
Another thing that I didn't like is that they had screwy Daffy in almost all of his shorts and to me at least that version of Daffy just isn't that funny. I personally find the Daffy that we see when ever he goes up against Bugs to be more funny but for some reason Warner Bros really like screwy Daffy since this is the version of the character that got in Wabbit / New Looney Tunes as well so weather or not they find this version of the character easier to market to young kids I don't know but that's just what I think.
Another thing that I didn't quite like that much is the fact that for alot of his shorts they had Daffy paired up with Porky Pig for some reason which I wouldn't mind that much except those are the only shorts in which Porky appears as well. Hell in this first batch of episodes there's only one short in which Daffy appears with someone else and that's in the short "Plumber's Quack" where he appears with Elmer Fudd and once again is his screwy self and there's one where Daffy appears on his own called "Bubble Dum" which rather rightfully uses his screwy persona.
As you guys will now this is a comedy series and that means that we have to talk about the comedy in this first batch of episodes. For me the comedy was very hit and miss which isn't necessarily a bad thing since all comedy is subjective , however I will say that when a joke does indeed work it works really freaking well it's just a shame that all of the comedy is slapstick and none of the classic Looney Tunes wordplay is anywhere to be found in this batch of episodes which is a shame in my own humble opinion.
Overall this was a solid first batch of episodes they did a really good job of trying to capture the magic of the original shorts which while the animation succeeded in doing so the humour and the writing didn't So yeah it's a very mixed bad I can say for sure that it's better then Wabbit / New Looney Tunes ever was and when this show is good it's really freaking good as such this batch of episodes gets a 7 out of 10 from me and yes I will be reviewing each batch of episodes whenever they release on HBO Max.
