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What's Wong with WABBIT?
9 years ago
General
WABBIT, season one, part one
http://www.amazon.com/Wabbit-S1-P1-.....dp_product_img
Yeah, yeah, I get it: this is a back-to-basics, slapstick Bugs Bunny for younger (much younger) viewers, a bunch of six-minute episodes inspired by the old seven-minute theatrical Looney Tunes we all know and love. Bugs's trickster-god demolition of bullies and pompous authority figures is front and center, as is the over-the-top violence. The highly stylized figures and backgrounds are easy on the eye, too. So why doesn't WABBIT work? Why isn't this series the least bit funny?
We're not stuck in the bad old days of ANIMANIACS and TINY TOON ADVENTURES, when the animators were field hands and the writers (who couldn't draw) were the straw bosses. The animators are clearly having fun with what they're doing, but is it possible that, given a mandate to honor the spirit of the old cartoons, no one realized that they simply weren't very good at writing slapstick gags? Bugs needs other characters to play off of, but in WABBIT he's saddled with characters so bland he might as well be alone onscreen. His new, painfully unfunny sidekicks -- the moronic Bigfoot and the generic Squeaks the Squirrel -- barely register, and the older Tunes seem miscast. Wile E. Coyote is now a condescending tech geek who won't shut up; worse, he doesn't have anything particularly funny to say. Yosemite Sam, formerly one of Bugs's most reliably funny sparring partners, is a shell of himself: just another blustering, personality-challenged fool for Bugs to destroy. The new villains, with the possible exception of the Grim Rabbit (Death...with bunny ears), are instantly forgettable. Gags from sixty-year-old cartoons are recycled, to little effect.
What went wrong with WABBIT? Why is this series so depressing to watch?
http://www.amazon.com/Wabbit-S1-P1-.....dp_product_img
Yeah, yeah, I get it: this is a back-to-basics, slapstick Bugs Bunny for younger (much younger) viewers, a bunch of six-minute episodes inspired by the old seven-minute theatrical Looney Tunes we all know and love. Bugs's trickster-god demolition of bullies and pompous authority figures is front and center, as is the over-the-top violence. The highly stylized figures and backgrounds are easy on the eye, too. So why doesn't WABBIT work? Why isn't this series the least bit funny?
We're not stuck in the bad old days of ANIMANIACS and TINY TOON ADVENTURES, when the animators were field hands and the writers (who couldn't draw) were the straw bosses. The animators are clearly having fun with what they're doing, but is it possible that, given a mandate to honor the spirit of the old cartoons, no one realized that they simply weren't very good at writing slapstick gags? Bugs needs other characters to play off of, but in WABBIT he's saddled with characters so bland he might as well be alone onscreen. His new, painfully unfunny sidekicks -- the moronic Bigfoot and the generic Squeaks the Squirrel -- barely register, and the older Tunes seem miscast. Wile E. Coyote is now a condescending tech geek who won't shut up; worse, he doesn't have anything particularly funny to say. Yosemite Sam, formerly one of Bugs's most reliably funny sparring partners, is a shell of himself: just another blustering, personality-challenged fool for Bugs to destroy. The new villains, with the possible exception of the Grim Rabbit (Death...with bunny ears), are instantly forgettable. Gags from sixty-year-old cartoons are recycled, to little effect.
What went wrong with WABBIT? Why is this series so depressing to watch?
Incidentally, I liked Animaiacs. What crawled up your tailfeathers and died?
I just can't stand it.
unless i missed that ep
that was off about it. Perhaps you hit the nail on the head,
without even realizing it. With the rest of the cast rather
mediocre at best, Bugs brand of trickster zaniness almost
seems overkill, since none of them have the slightest
chance against him. What made the original shorts work
so well, is that Daffy, Sam, etc, where just as devious and
clever as the Bunny himself, they were just tripped up
by their own flaws as much as anything Bugs did. In Wabbit,
they just seem to be mere punching bags for the rabbit's
wit.
Let me try to frame my thoughts here.
A lot of people who have lived for more than 15-20 years seem to have taken on this sort of... 'nothing is ever going to be as good as the good ol' days' mentality. A lot of them also overanalyse things made to entertain children with not a lot else going on in their heads, and a distinct lack of analytical ability. This ruins EVERYTHING for them, because everything they see is now 'bland' and 'cliche' and 'rehashed'. ...and yes, I agree with you, they ARE those things. But when you saw them for the first time, they were pretty much the same thing already; you just hadn't seen them before. It's a sure bet there were people who felt the exact same way back then.
I find that one of the only ways to approach cartoons is to turn off that part of your brain that has 'grown up', and just try to let the inner child enjoy the goofiness. Could it be new, less reused goofiness? Of course it could. But it's not quite as horrible as you might be thinking it is either. I agree they should try harder with the villains, and build up a fuller cast of loonies to help Bugs along; he was never meant to work alone.
But in the end, the cartoon is just that; a cartoon, aimed at simpler minds than ours. I'll give you an example of overanalysis I recently encountered.
One person here on FA didn't think Zootopia was going to be any good. He was determined to hate the movie based on the producers, the 'shallow plot' and a bunch of other things I don't even remember. He was nitpicking furiously when I interjected with 'Maybe you should wait and see before hating the movie so much? It might be good.' This made the person FURIOUS. How DARE I suggest he actually SEE something before hating it?! (BTW, have you seen any bad reviews of that movie yet? I know I haven't!) Eventually this person swore to me he would NEVER watch the movie just to try to spite me, then blocked me from replying.
I see this way too often, and I think to some small extent, this is happening to you. Try not to get so hung up on what Looney Tunes was, since it's unlikely they're gonna bring it back exactly the same. You might enjoy the cartoon a tad more.
Hey, if you like crap, that's your business. My job as a critic is to explain why a piece of creative work succeeds or fails on its own terms, and then, less importantly, to explain why or why not I liked it. Unlike your ZOOTOPIA correspondent, I sat down and watched WABBIT before writing about it -- and sorry, DB, but it really was depressing to watch.
But yes you're right. I probably shouldn't have said anything. You were giving your personal critique of the cartoon, so you wanted all your focus and adult mentality available to judge this cartoon.
I get where you are coming from about it being depressing. I long ago stopped watching TV for the most part at all. I only saw Wabbit during a recent stay at s hospital where the only other alternative was to scream silently inside my head. It was... a modern cartoon, shall we say. Nothing modern really measures up to 'the good old days', and especially not if it's cloned or duplicated from existing cartoons from the past. Tom and Jerry these days is a horror show.
Sorry for saying anything though. I tend to want people to try to find ways to enjoy what's available. The only other option seems to be to find everything increasingly pointless and a waste of time.