BUGS BUNNY’S CHRISTMAS CAROL (1979)

Balladeer’s Blog’s 14th annual Christmas Carol-A-Thon nears its inevitable end with this latest review.

BUGS BUNNY’S CHRISTMAS CAROL (1979) – When is an adaptation of A Christmas Carol NOT an adaptation of A Christmas Carol? When it features Warner Brothers cartoon characters. Nearly thirty years later WB would inflict on the world another version of the Carol that was just as soulless and joyless as this 1979 effort.

Regular readers of Balladeer’s Blog know I love to laugh, so I’m not being grumpy by knocking this 8-minute piece of animation. I don’t even require fidelity to the Dickens story since I’ve given very positive reviews to things like Blackadder’s Christmas Carol, which depart far from what Dickens wrote but are actually funny.

Bugs Bunny’s Christmas Carol isn’t funny and doesn’t even qualify as clever, like WB’s A Connecticut Rabbit in King Arthur’s Court. But, as mentioned above, it’s only 8 minutes long and a few seconds of it are featured in Lethal Weapon, which is always one-fourth of our Christmas Action Marathon.

NOTE: The rundown goes Die Hard, Lethal Weapon, Invasion USA (1985 version) and Die Hard Two all accompanied by garlic-stuffed rib roast, potatoes au gratin and assorted cold cuts & vegetables to munch on after the main meal starts to wear off.

Yes, I was trying to stall before having to return to this review. At any rate, this Warner Brothers cartoon features Yosemite Sam as the cranky, miserly Scrooge figure and he is easily the best part. Porky Pig plays Bob Cratchit, and Bugs Bunny is Nephew Fred, while other WB characters show up in supporting roles, like Petunia Pig as Mrs. Cratchit and Tweety Bird as Tiny Tim.

In this version, Scrooge fires Bob Cratchit on Christmas Eve for daring to use an extra piece of coal for warmth AND threatens to evict him from his home by Midnight. Nephew Fred takes things into his own hands, at first engineering some Itchy & Scratchy style mayhem against Scrooge, then impersonating Marley’s Ghost as the only spirit who visits the miser in this Carol.

Scrooge is shepherded toward a new outlook on life and winds up making Bob Cratchit his new partner as well as spreading cash around with giddy abandon. For a nice little meta bit at the end, Yosemite Sam comes out of character to remind the other characters they were just doing a play about A Christmas Carol.

That being the case, he demands all his money back from the others, showing that Yosemite Sam remains as cantankerous as ever.

This WB effort was made in conjunction with DePatie-Freleng Enterprises, the people behind the Pink Panther cartoons. It’s never really bad, more just disappointing given the perfect “casting” of the characters and its potential for classic status if it had been expanded to at least a half-hour run time.