Dumb Patrol (1964)

A Masterpiece!

Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

Yosemite Sam's final appearance casts him as a Red Baron-style pilot hunted by Bugs Bunny in World War I. As is protocol, Sam gets to be the all-purpose villain who's all brawn and no brain. The Looney Tunes had obviously passed their prime by the release of "Dumb Patrol", but it's always fun to see the relaxed Bugs make mincemeat of the bellicose Sam. To crown everything, Sam treats his airplane like he does the animals in his other cartoons.I guess that we could be cynical about this cartoon given that the past two years have seen a look back at World War I and its disastrous consequences, namely the reparations imposed on Germany that set the stage for Hitler's rise to power. To be certain, this cartoon got released right on the verge of the Vietnam War, so that adds to the cynicism (in fact, a young Ho Chi Minh had appealed to Woodrow Wilson at the Versailles Negotiations, but the rabidly racist Wilson refused to listen to him).Taken on its own it's a funny cartoon, even though I could figure out what was going to happen in some scenes. Just remember what to think if you ever see the Hell's Angels...

Later (and lesser) Bugs Bunny short, set in World War I France, has Bugs and Yosemite Sam as rival pilots trying to shoot each other down. Porky Pig appears in a small role near the beginning. Well, this stinks. The few gags that even approach amusing are just rehashes of things the characters had done before. The animation on the whole is not good. The characters are drawn poorly and the colors are muddied. Mel Blanc does fine with the voices, trying his best to elevate weak material. Surprisingly, the music is the best part. I say this is surprising because the music is courtesy of Bill Lava, whose music for some of the Roadrunner cartoons in the 1960s is legendary for its awfulness. If you were to rank Bugs Bunny shorts from best to worst, this would probably be in the bottom ten.

Dumb Patrol is neither among the best or the worst. However it is for me one of the more disappointing Looney Tunes cartoons. I will give it plaudits for making an effort to stay true to Bugs and Yosemite Sam's characters, for having some decent music from Bill Lava particularly the music when Sam is falling down in the sky and for Mel Blanc putting some fine voice work here though some of his lines for Yosemite could have been delivered with a little more robust it sometimes sounded deep and subdued. The animation was inconsistent, Bugs and Yosemite were fine, but the colours lacked vibrancy and Porky(who was only in the cartoon for about half a minute) was very poorly drawn. The cartoon is too short and feels rather leaden in the pace particularly at the start, while the story is standard. The writing and sight gags were below par I feel, I liked Bugs' final line but I feel more could've been done with the closing shot and while I smiled a couple of times there was never anything I found laugh-out-loud funny here. Overall, could have been better but it does have some good things. 4/10 Bethany Cox