Bah Humduck!: A Looney Tunes Christmas

After the Walt Disney characters and The Muppets, it was the turn of the Looney Tunes stable to tackle the popular Yuletide tale revolving around the miserly Ebenezer Scrooge; coming so late in the game (i.e. way past the Warners Animation Studios' prime), it is no surprise that this emerges as the least effective rendition of all! The grouchy Daffy Duck is the natural choice for Scrooge: with the premise updated to modern times, many of the familiar Looney Tunes figures turn up – atypically – as submissive employees in Daffy's department store (that said, Bugs Bunny is his usual independent self, though he serves no particular function here except to further harass Daffy!). On the other hand, Porky stands in for Bob Cratchit, Sylvester is "Jacob Marley" and, as the Christmas Ghosts, we have Granny and Tweety(!), Yosemite Sam and the Tasmanian Devil. Even at a mere 46 minutes, the film is mostly a drag – since the comedy is generally forced, thus unfunny, and the quality of the animation extremely poor when compared to the dazzling imagination displayed by the form in its heyday.

I rented this movie today. I thought it was OK, but the main problem was the company that produced it. Warner Bros. Animation hasn't been the same since 2002, when Sander Schwartz took over and ruined everything. The company mostly focused on cartoons featuring the DC superheroes ("Justice League Unlimited," "Teen Titans," "The Batman"), crude Flash-style cartoons that try to bring in humor ("Mucha Lucha," "Xiaolin Showdown"), and some other action shows. They also tried taking over production on Scooby-Doo, and totally killed the magic of the show with changing the voices and sound effects and animation style ("What's New, Scooby-Doo?," "Shaggy and Scooby-Doo Get a Clue," "Aloha Scooby-Doo"), and also completely changed Tom and Jerry (with "Tom and Jerry Tales," which looks even worse than the Gene Deitch and Chuck Jones T&J cartoons!). Despite turning out all this mediocre product, the studio tried a couple of times to produce Looney Tunes cartoons in the old spirit, with poor-quality shorts like "Museum Scream," "Hare and Loathing in Las Vegas," etc., and ultimately, "Looney Tunes: Back in Action." But when the latter flopped at box-office (hey, it was a bad idea, "Finding Nemo" was poisoning the other animated flicks of that year!), the future of Looney Tunes was at stake. Termite Terrace churned out "Baby Looney Tunes," "Duck Dodgers" and "Loonatics Unleashed," which are NOWHERE near the quality of the classics, even nowhere near the quality of the cheap late 1960s Warner-Seven Arts cartoons! This current addition to the Looney Tunes filmography, "Bah Humduck!," is the latest attempt by Warner Bros. Animation to do a Looney Tunes cartoon. The current staff at the animation department had no or barely enough experience with the classic (but near-obscure) Warner Bros. cartoon characters. Gossamer and Marvin the Martian and Hubie and Bertie and a few others are poorly drawn here, and the music is NO MATCH for Carl Stalling (or even Milt Franklyn.) Heck, even Bill Lava could do better music than that. If they wanted Carl Stalling-style, they could've hired Steven Bernstein, music composer for "Animaniacs" and "Pinky and the Brain," as well as the 1994 Animaniacs-esquire Hanna-Barbera special, "Arabian Nights." Also, Wile E. Coyote is always treated like that he is always silent or deaf or doesn't know how to talk, and that he can only use signs. I know Wile E. Coyote. He talked a couple of times. And you know what? I actually LIKED his voice! Mel Blanc gave him a great British-sounding voice that matched really well with him. But alas, Mel Blanc has gone, but there are many others out there. They could've hired Kevin Michael Richardson, whom voices Tech E. Coyote (who, unfortunately, sounds NOTHING like Wile E. Coyote!) Also, Billy West does a good Elmer, but a bad Bugs Bunny! I LOVE Billy West's Fry from "Futurama," as well as his Stimpy (but his Ren wasn't the best Ren voice though). Speedy Gonzales's voice is also really bad, too. He is designed in the same style as you see on most merchandising. The best Speedy Gonzales design out there was the 1955-1967 Speedy.

But anyways, it shows that the Looney Tunes are still struggling to make it into today's culture. If they do, and the quality improves or Sander Schwartz leaves the studio, it could lead into a Looney Tunes renaissance!

Charles Dickens' ghost story of Christmas is the greatest work of fiction ever. That's my opinion.

Any Studio, Actor, Musician, Animator, or other performer that retells or adapts this story spreads the hope of Christmas to another audience. Humduck is not my favorite 'Carol. It does however faithfully enough follow the original storyline. The thrill of seeing a Scrooge, whether man, woman, duck, or dog, reach redemption never grows old.

Daffy is one of the most severe and greedy Scrooge characters I've seen. I can think of only Cecely Tyson's malevolent portrayal as more wicked. Scrooge does not have to be so evil. The Looney Tunes model had them include physical elements that weren't in the original story. That's the way they told the story.

I ask producers and publishers to keep the tale alive.

Nic

"Bah Humduck!: A Looney Tunes Christmas" is an Animation - Comedy movie in which we watch a greedy duck who hates Christmas getting visited by three ghosts in the middle of the night. These visits are very important and they will change everything.

I enjoyed this animation movie because it combined very well the original story with Looney Tunes and the result was both enjoyable and interesting. The direction which was made by Charles Visser was good and he created a festive feeling along with the pleasure of watching Looney Tunes be a part of it. Lastly, I have to say that "Bah Humduck!: A Looney Tunes Christmas" is a nice animation movie to watch and I am sure you will enjoy it very much.

When you've got a mere 46 minutes to tell a highly condensed version of a classic Xmas story then it's obviously a good idea to cram as much story in there are possible and try your hardest to create a cosy, Xmas atmosphere. There's not much of that to be had in Bah Humduck! Cartoon writers have been milking the Christmas Carol goat for years. Modern spins on the story rarely work (Scrooged being a meta-fictional exception) and Bah Humduck distances itself from the source material so much that it is barely recognizable. Daffy stars as the boss of a huge department store who loves exploiting people in order to make many Xmas dollars. The Ebeneezer Scrooge story is shoehorned into this setting, but the colour schemes are far too high key and bright to evoke a true Xmas feel. Almost the entire feature is set inside this bland environment.

Far too much time is given to hijinks utterly void of comic timing. The first 11 minutes, which establish Daffy as a bad boss, are really nothing but him flying across the screen and smashing into various things. It's not funny in the slightest.

I feel that the people who made this were only interested in churning out a quick, easy product and had no interest in making it something special. A Charlie Brown Christmas was half the length and has been consistently popular for well over forty years. Bah Humduck will disappear without a trace.