Maybe I’m just an old curmudgeon, but I like my Looney Tunes in brief three-minute vignettes wherein Bugs Bunny or Daffy outsmarts Yosemite Sam or Elmer Fudd, Foghorn Leghorn evades the attacks of Chicken Hawk, Daffy battles Marvin the Martian, Sylvester attempts to eat Tweety, Wile E. Coyote tries to kill and devour the Roadrunner (Beep! Beep!), or Pepe le Pew romances an unwilling cat with an unfortunate white stripe. Does that combination of events ever get old? No, because there’s some comic slapstick genius at the heart of the franchise. The Looney Tunes classics are just that: classic. Since then, Warner Brothers has attempted to revitalize Bugs and the gang by making them play basketball in Space Jam, sending them on adventures with Brendan Fraser, or turning them into superheroes (yes, that happened). Considering those other directions, The Looney Tunes Show feels much closer to the norm of the original series, even if it takes some weird turns to get there.
Instead of brief unrelated sketches that inevitably see one character wailing on another, either with tools of violence or unrequited love, The Looney Tunes Show has Bugs and Daffy living together in a house and dealing with adventures as they arise. Maybe the roommate situation between Bugs and Daffy was necessary to help endear the characters to kids today, but the ultimate effect is that it limits the potential for each episode’s wackiness. Save for a few rare instances, almost all of the episodes are centered on Bugs or Daffy. The borderline insanity of Daffy makes for some great contemporary comedy that’s never quite sarcasm but still amusingly cynical and subversive enough to make you question whether or not you just saw what you think you saw. While you’ll always get a quick insert of a Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote piece rendered in CGI, as far as character diversity goes you’re more likely to see the rest of the Looney Tunes cast show up in brief cameos as opposed to receiving their own stories (for example, Foghorn Leghorn shows up almost exclusively in music videos sung by him).
The biggest problem with The Looney Tunes Show is the assignment of odd voices to characters previously rendered silent for the sake of circumstance, like the red-haired monster Gossamer, who now talks with the voice of a 6-year-old. It’s just odd and feels very wrong. Gossamer creeped me out when I was a kid, but that’s better than making me cringe as an adult.
The second volume of The Looney Tunes Show’s first season includes the episodes “Monster Talent – A Zipline in the Sand”, “Reunion – Cock of the Walk – Fee Fi Fo Dumb”, “Casa de Calma – Queso Bandito – Sail Fail”, “Devil Dog – Unsafe at Any Speed”.
DVD Bonus Features
None.
If you needed further proof this isn't your traditional Looney Tunes, just check out the following Foghorn Leghorn music video.
"The Looney Tunes Show: Season 1, Vol 2" is on sale December 6, 2011 and is not rated. Animation, Children & Family, Comedy. Directed by Keith Baxter. Written by Larry Dorf, Hugh Davidson, Rachel Ramras. Starring Billy West, Fred Armisen, Grey Delisle, Jeff Bergman, Maurice LaMarche.
