Baton Bunny 1959 ( Dir Chuck Jones)

What is it with cartoons and music? they blend so well together, it's almost scary. Well to be more precise Opera, Classical, country or modern instrumentals seem to work well. Funnily enough hip hop and rock don't mix that well with animation ( see the disastrous Space Jam or the equally dire Looney Tunes back in action).

Although Jones did not create as many music based cartoons as Freleng did, the ones he did manage to pull off are some of the most famous ones of all time. What's Opera Doc? (1957), One Froggy Evening (1955) and Long-Haired Hare (1949)

Baton Bunny, However, not a great music based cartoon. It works, It's functional but it does seriously lack the charisma of the previous ones I've mentioned.

The short begins with Bugs walking up to a podium, ready to conduct a symphony.That is, until there is a guy coughing in the aisles and he is quickly ejected ( the best part is that we don't see this, Jones is using sound for us to conjure an image in our minds). Bugs then, very noisily, puts on some glasses (which is the last non orchestral sound we'll hear throughout the whole picture) , selects and sharpens his baton and the whole orchestra kicks off.

Things are going quite smoothly, until a fly arrives and lands on Bugs' nose. This disrupts Bugs' flow of concentration and he whips the musicians into an orchestral frenzy but manages to get rid of it. After some gags involving his ever sliding shirt cuffs and small recreation of the American civil war, the fly returns and drives Bugs berserk and he ends up destroying the orchestra while pursuing the fly.

When he's finished, Bugs finds out that the whole theatre is empty, except for the sound of one person clapping. When he looks down he finds out that it is the fly. Bugs bows down anyways.

It's a sort of cutesy feel good ending. No one loses , no one is tortured. No one has to use wit. In this respect it's sort of functional. Personally i like it but I feel that so much more could have been done. Funnily enough it has the same feel as Jones' Tom and Jerry Cartoons, very solid but a bit slapdash on the whole.