The Looney Tunes Golden Collection
December 2003 Reviewed by: Anthony Di Marco Format: DVD	(all ratings out of 5): Overall Enjoyment Picture Quality Packaged Extras Sound Quality

In this age of "reality" television, it is becoming harder to tell reality from fantasy. Shows like Fear Factor and Survivor not only pit real people against each other, but also revel in the less appealing side of human nature. You want to see a crowd of people laugh at the embarrassment, and in some cases agony, of a complete stranger? Just flip on America’s Funniest Home Videos. Or if Bob Saget’s version of "reality" isn’t real enough for you, you can always change the channel and witness a self-proclaimed horse’s ass exposing his manhood to some horrible danger for the sake of a laugh. Such programming not only has little educational value, but also zero respect for human beings. There was a time when this sort of bizarre violence was relegated to acts committed between two hand-drawn characters in a cartoon. My, how times have changed.

Director Chuck Jones will be the first to admit that Warner Brothers cartoons were not intended for children. Still, it is interesting to observe how children gravitate toward Bugs and his cohorts. It only took two eight-minute shorts to get my three-year-old son hooked. Could it be that children understand the poetic justice captured in each Tune tale? Many adults discount Looney Tunes and Merry Melodies as overly aggressive and mean spirited, containing little depth or moral grounding. But as with many great works of art, you need to look below the surface to gain perspective on what the artist intended. And what the talented crew at Termite Terrace ultimately created was a set of morality tales in support of the underdog, ingenuity, and anti-violence.

Unlike some jackasses, "toon" violence was a function of story and the direct result of a character’s ignorance or cruelty. The violence portrayed in a Warner Brothers cartoon was often redirected at the character that resorted to violence in the first place. The hunter became the hunted and the weapon of choice was not reciprocated brutality, but a talking rabbit’s witty repartee. Think about it. Was there ever a point where the Road Runner raised a feather against the coyote? No, Wile E. Coyote brought it all on himself. He set into motion the countless ACME devices that backfire. At its root, the coyote is caught in a Looney version of Dante’s Inferno. His own contrapasso is to relive his mistakes indefinitely -- one explosion, one gigantic boulder, and one free fall off a high cliff at a time. A smarter carnivore would have become a vegetarian long ago.

Take a look at any other Warner Brothers cartoons and you will see similar situations occurring between different characters. But unlike the recent Scooby Doo, where every mystery is the same as the last, the Looney Tunes conflict between opponents is driven by personality and intelligence. The coyote may be a self-proclaimed "super genius," but only a fool would devote so much blind faith to a faceless mail-order company after so many disasters. Conversely, Daffy Duck’s problem is not that he has faith in a lousy ACME product, but that he fails to accept defeat or recognize his own shortcomings. The same dynamic is apparent between Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner, but in Daffy’s case, the point is not survival or instinct, but ego. When Daffy gets his bill repositioned six ways to Sunday in "Rabbit Seasoning," it is not because Bugs pulls the trigger, it’s because Daffy fails to accept that a more seasoned jokester has outclassed him. The "wascally wabbit" simply uses his wits and his command of pronouns to outsmart Daffy and Elmer Fudd.

The serious absence of "What’s Opera, Doc" notwithstanding, The Golden Collection (which, by the way, also includes The Premiere Collection of cartoons) is a fine assortment of what Bugs and company had to offer. Given that there were upwards of a thousand cartoons produced by the Termite Terrace, I’m sure there will be additional DVD collections in the not-so-distant future; studios rarely release their entire A-list product in one fell swoop. On the other hand, I would have been more than willing to trade the lackluster two-disc rip-offs Reality Check and Stranger than Fiction for an extra helping of the classics. The characters in these sets, released concurrently with The Golden Collection, may be the same, but these more recently made lame attempts at cashing in on the Looney Tune franchise are devoid of any wit or depth. The animation is cheap and clunky while the violence is simply done for the sake of violence. Watching the Three Stooges would make better use of one’s time.

I got a good sense of how bad television broadcast was when I was a kid. On DVD, even the older Looney Tunes are colorful and rich. While there is some film grain and a few scratches, Warner Brothers has done an impressive job at restoring their cartoons to a level that equals more recent animation. Audio quality is very good. The mono recordings are actually quite dynamic and clean. Composer Carl Stallings’ wonderfully memorable orchestrations are perfectly preserved, while shorts like "Baton Bunny" and "Long-Haired Hare" impress with a surprisingly forceful orchestra.

It’s nice to see a DVD collection produced with care rather than simply thrown together. Not only is the viewer treated to some very funny commentaries and a fascinating behind-the-scenes documentary about the "Boys of Termite Terrace," but also some excellent "making of" vignettes that do an exemplary job focusing on specific details surrounding these classic animations. Each vignette is a perfect complement to the cartoon it is paired with. Finding out how Yosemite Sam was director Friz Freleng’s alter ego, or how the Coyote’s near misses were carefully orchestrated to preserve his character’s ongoing motivation, only scratches the surface of a very complete set of extras.

It’s hard to believe that many consider this gaggle of characters violent. And while I’m sure Jackass will do it one day, I can’t remember a time in the "real world" where a talking rabbit walked down the street and whacked a pedestrian with an insanely large mallet. Looney Tunes and Merry Melodies may be far from educational, but they certainly are a prime example of quality programming created with imagination and craft. These are classics that will continue to hold up over time. I certainly enjoy them as much now as I did when I was my son’s age, and doubt that upcoming releases like Looney Tunes: Back in Action will generate the same magic. I know that many find current reality shows quite hilarious, but take my word for it, you don’t know "funny" until you have experienced a duck being lampooned by a rabbit gone amuck.

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