Elmer's Candid Camera (Merrie Melodies)
| Elmer's Candid Camera (episode 277) | ||||||||||||
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 How not to begin a well-known cartoon character's career.
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Elmer's Candid Camera is a 1940 Warner Brothers cartoon directed by Chuck Jones and written by Rich Hogan and marks the debut of Elmer Fudd with Happy Rabbit (Bugs Bunny's prototype) as a co-star. Elmer Fudd wants to take pictures of wildlife, but keeps getting interrupted by Happy Rabbit who keeps playing tricks on him.
Bad Qualities
- To write down the first problem, this cartoon is a short where Elmer gets tortured constantly, even though Elmer did nothing wrong to deserve it, a recurring problem in Elmer's earliest cartoons directed by Chuck Jones which is also repeated again in both "Good Night Elmer" and "Elmer's Pet Rabbit".
- Like most early Chuck Jones cartoons, the pacing is very slow and not really that fast.
- Elmer's early design in this cartoon looks very garish and off-model, as if he looked like a combination of his current design and Egghead (Elmer's predecessor)'s design, right down to wearing Egghead's eccentric clothing. Possibly justified, though, since this was his first cartoon and his design may not have been quite nailed down yet.
- Happy Rabbit (a prototype of Bugs Bunny) was extremely unlikable since he keeps tormenting Elmer Fudd even though Elmer did nothing wrong since all he wanted to do was take pictures of wildlife.
- On that topic, Happy never gets punished for his actions.
- Most of the jokes and gags are weak and unfunny.
- Being that this is one of Chuck Jones' earliest Looney Tunes cartoons which try too hard to be like Disney cartoons, this cartoon feels like a rejected Donald Duck cartoon but with Elmer Fudd in Donald Duck's place.
- Unlike previous Happy Rabbit cartoons, Happy Rabbit feels very watered-down and lifeless here, as he barely ever acts crazy and did his distinct Woody Woodpecker-esque laugh only once in the ending, compared to the character's previous cartoons such as "Porky's Hare Hunt", "Prest-O Change-O" (which is ironically also directed by Jones), and even "Hare-Um Scare-Um", where he was much funnier, wackier and livelier.
- In addition, Happy Rabbit is also shown to be quite a grump as well, as he not only does he often angrily glare at Elmer, yet in one scene he constantly mumbles and rants angrily about his predicaments, hence making Happy Rabbit seem a more unpleasant character than in previous appearances. Adding salt to the wound is that this character trait of Happy Rabbit from this cartoon his is later carried over to Bugs Bunny in his first ever cartoon by Chuck Jones entitled "Elmer's Pet Rabbit" the following year, which isn't any better.
- The scene where Elmer goes insane as the result of Happy's torment at the climax feels very forced, unprompted, unnecessary, and uncalled for. Not on that, it isn't even remotely funny or amusing in the slightest either, mainly due to it's poor use of comic timing.
- It also is a bland rehash of the ending scene from "Daffy Duck and Egghead" where Egghead (aka Elmer's prototype) actually had a reason to go completely insane. But here, it's nothing.
- Horrible ending: The ending is the equivalent of a kick to the groin, as after Happy Rabbit saves Elmer from drowning in the lake it seems that the two might've finally made up for the rivalry they had throughout the entire cartoon, just for Happy to kick Elmer back into the lake and sadistically laughs at Elmer's fate. Elmer has an irritated look on his face, sitting in the river as Happy tosses the 'How to Photograph Wild Life' book on top of his head.
Good Qualities
- It does mark the debut of Elmer Fudd, who is also likable in this cartoon.
- Good animation and music for its time.
- As with the rest of the Looney Tunes shorts of the time, Carl Stalling's music is nice to listen to and fits the action onscreen very nicely.
- Chuck Jones would eventually learn from his mistakes and would later direct much better cartoons in years to follow, where like the rest of the Warner directors, he recast Bugs Bunny as a more likable and sympathetic character than his predecessor Happy Rabbit, starting with "A Wild Hare" in the same year.
Reception
Chuck Jones (who directed the short) wasn’t very pleased with how this cartoon turned out and was one of the reasons why he disliked his early work from the 1930s and 1940s. Jones said the following about this cartoon:
"In this cartoon we find Bugs stumbling, fumbling, and mumbling around, vainly seeking a personality on which to hang him dialogue and action, or— in better words than mine—"walking around with his umbilical in his hand, looking for someplace to plug it in." It is obvious when one views this cartoon, which I recommend only if you are going to die of ennui, that my conception of timing and dialogue was formed by watching the action in the La Brea tar pits. It would be complimentary to call it sluggish. Not only Bugs suffered at my hands, but difficult as it is to make an unassertive character like Elmer Fudd into a flat, complete shmuck, I managed. Perhaps the kindest thing to say about “Elmer's Candid Camera” is that it taught everyone what not to do and how not to do it."