Looney Tunes:
Golden and Premiere Collections (2003)
Film:
DVD:

Written by Warren Foster, Rich Hogan, Cal Howard, Michael Maltese, Sid Marcus, Dave Monahan, Tedd Pierce, Bill Scott, Lloyd Turner
Directed by Bob Clampett, Arthur Davis, Friz Freleng, Chuck Jones, Abe Levitow, Robert McKimson
Starring the Voices of Mel Blanc, Arthur Q. Bryan, June Foray, Stan Freberg

Golden Collection Features:

• Fifty-six uncut cartoons
  
• A greeting from Chuck Jones
  
• Vintage docu: "Camera Three: The Boys From Termite Terrace"
  
• Featurettes: "Bugs: A Rabbit For All Seasonings," "Short-Fuse Shootout: The Small Tale of Yosemite Sam," "Forever Befuddled," "Hard Luck Duck," "Porky Pig Roast: A Tribute to the World's Most Famous Ham," "Animal Quackers," "Too Fast, Too Furry-ous," "Merrie Melodies: Carl Stalling and Cartoon Music," "Blanc Expressions," "Needy for Speedy," "Putty Problems and Canary Rows," "Southern Pride Chicken"
  
• "Blooper Bunney: Bugs Bunny's 51st Anniversary," with optional commentary by filmmaker Greg Ford
  
• Excerpts from the films My Dream Is Yours and Two Guys From Texas
• "A Star is Bored" bridging sequence and The Astro Nuts audio recording session footage from "The Bugs Bunny Show"
  
• Trailers for Bugs Bunny's Cartoon Festival and Bugs Bunny's Cartoon Jamboree
  
• Stills galleries
  
• Running audio commentaries on selected cartoons by historian Michael Barrier, filmmaker Greg Ford, voice actor Freberg, historian Jerry Beck
  
• Music-only audio tracks on selected cartoons
  
• Episode of Toon Heads: "The Lost Cartoons"
  
• Schematics for "Hair-Raising Hare" and "The Hypo-Chondri-Cat"
  
• Docu: "Irreverent Imagination: The Golden Age of Looney Tunes"
  
• Bonus Short: "Bosko, The Talk-Ink Kid"
  
• Virgil Ross pencil tests
  

Premiere Collection Features:

• Twenty-eight uncut cartoons (all of which are on the Golden Collection as well)
  
• UFO Getaway challenge game
  
• CD-ROM game
  

Released by Warner Brothers
Rating: NR
Region: 1
Anamorphic: N/A; cartoons appear in their original 1.33:1 format.

My Advice: Buy the Golden Collection, skip the Premiere one

There are rare occasions in which cartoons can work on multiple levels. You watch them as a child and laugh, then watch them again as adults and laugh even harder, amazed that you got away with watching them when you were younger. Such is the case with the Looney Tunes series, which is akin to an animated force of nature. They created characters that perhaps only the Disney stable can compete with for sheer universal recognition. They created situations that have made their way into the cultural consciousness: everyone has a favorite Looney Tune or Looney Tune moment. Many can quote dialogue wholesale. These things are an institution and Warner Brothers is finally recognizing that instead of trying to rehash new ideas with people who may be talented--but they're not Chuck Jones, they're not Mel Blanc--perhaps they should go back to their roots and present what's probably one of the most requested DVDs in recent memory.

The Golden set is the one I'm primarily reviewing here, since the Premiere set is pretty much just a subset of the former apart from two games that are so insignificant they don't bear mentioning.

The Golden set is a helluva steal. Fifty-six cartoons that look sexier than they ever have--the colors are bright and crisp, and in most cases they look like completely different cartoons--probably just as good as when they first premiered. Much has been made of the selection of cartoons--about some of the omissions--but Christ, people, you've got "Duck Amuck" and "Rabbit of Seville" on DVD looking perfect...shut the hell up. Even the worst Looney Tune is better than most of the animation of today.

The discs are stacked. First up, on selected cartoons among the fourteen on each disc, you can choose to listen to a commentary track or a music-only track. The commentaries are either hit or miss. Historians Beck and Barrier are quite informative, filling you in on the backgrounds of characters and shorts and also bringing in quotes from deceased creators, or better yet, playing for you audio from interviews that they had done with them. Since we can't get them in person, this is the next best thing. Kudos to WB for bringing them out. Filmmaker Greg Ford gives decent commentary, although he annoys me by never introducing himself when he starts (and if you enter a commentary via the menu with the cartoon selections on it, you can't see who's doing the commentary). Stan Freberg's commentary is mostly miss, as he seems to be having a great time saying Pete Puma's lines over the lines in the cartoon. We're glad you can still do Pete, Stan, but come on, try and entertain us as much as yourself, okay?

The music-only tracks are very helpful in catching some things that a viewer probably didn't recognize when they were younger. The amazing orchestral acrobatics of Carl Stalling, for example. I was unaware that the reason Looney Tunes' musical scores sound so damn good is because the Warner Brothers Orchestra was given over to them in order for them to do something, since otherwise they were getting paid to sit around. Crazed. Also, being Warner Brothers, they had access to the entire WB music library.

As for the documentaries, they're all fairly extensive. The Camera Three docu is nice in that you get to see all of the Warner Brothers creators back when they were all still with us, and you see them drawing for you on the spot. The new docu, "Irreverent Imagination," is also excellent, comprised as it is of many talking heads telling you about the magic that these cartoons created. The numerous featurettes across all four discs are short but sweet, bringing you either focus on someone like Blanc or Stalling or a particular character and their origins.

A nice addition is the 51st Anniversary short, which is basically all "backstage" and blooper footage of the Looney characters. As Ford explains here in his commentary, by the time the short was created, all of the characters had been stripped of their snarky, dangerous and/or compelling personalities in favor of a more kid-friendly demeanor as the entire line shifted away from older audiences as their target. Once the cameras are supposedly no longer running, though, the characters revert. It's actually pretty damn funny.

You also excerpts from two live action films in which Bugs Bunny appeared, My Dream is Yours and Two Guys From Texas, neither of which I had heard of before. They're amusing and nice to have here for posterity, but that's about it. Speaking of excerpts, also here are some audio bits of Mel Blanc recording voices for new footage to bridge old bits in the Bugs Bunny Show, as well as a reconstructed video sequence from the show. And also on the posterity side of things, you get an episode of the Cartoon Network's Toon Heads that deals with "Lost Cartoons" such as bits from advertising and Private Snafu, all of which should have been included somewhere on the set--we can only hope for future sets. You also get the "Bosko" short, some schematics from a couple of shorts and some pencil tests from Virgil Ross.

There are a couple of things that hold this back from being the best set it could have been. First of all, Chuck Jones was able to deliver an introduction...but no commentaries? You can't tell me they didn't know a DVD set like this was coming and couldn't have planned ahead. This is an unforgivable oversight. I can only hope that they've got some up their sleeve for a later set, but I'm not holding my breath.

The only other major issue is the selection. A lot of people have complained about what was included, but it's just a random selection with a couple of key shorts. What would have made a lot more sense is to handle it with some method to the madness, as Disney has done commendably on the Walt Disney Treasures line. I would have much preferred the sets of shorts to be divided up in some sane fashion: "Bugs Bunny: The Early Years" or "The Complete Road Runner and Coyote" or...something. That way, nobody could complain and there would be some inkling that someone was thinking ahead. But, oh well.

Anyway, bitching aside it's tremendous just to have these things on DVD and looking as good as they do. Sadly, another omission is the comparison of before and after that many cleaned up DVDs sport--but not this one. You don't really appreciate just how dirty the versions we watched growing up were until you get a side by side comparison. There are some websites that do this with stills and I urge everyone to go track some down.

As I said, there are some detractions but the benefits far outweigh everything else. This set, the Golden one, of course, is a must-own.