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Wackiki Wabbit is a 1943 Warner Bros. Merrie Melodies cartoon, starring Bugs Bunny. It was written by Tedd Pierce and directed by Chuck Jones. Voices were provided by Mel Blanc (Bugs), Tedd Pierce (the tall, thin man), and Michael Maltese (the short, fat man - the two men's appearances are rough caricatures of the actual men). The musical score was conducted by Carl Stalling.
Wackiki Wabbit is notable for its experimental use of strongly graphic, nearly abstract backgrounds. The title is a double play on words, with "Wackiki" suggesting both the island setting (as in "Waikiki") as well as suggesting "wacky" (crazy) along with the usual Elmer Fudd speech pronunciation of "rabbit", although Elmer does not appear in this picture.
This cartoon has fallen to the public domain after United Artists (successor to Associated Artists Productions) failed to renew the copyright on time. The cartoon can be found, uncut and restored, on Disc 1 of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 3.
Plot
The cartoon opens with two castaways adrift on a small raft in the middle of the ocean, underscored with "Asleep in the Deep". Delirious from hunger, they start imagining each other (or even their own limbs) as food items. They spot an island in the distance and rush ashore, underscored by "Down Where the Trade Winds Play", a song used several times in the cartoon, where they meet Bugs Bunny. To his friendly, "What's the good word?" they answer "FOOD!" and start after Bugs, who leaps away on a vine with a Tarzan yell.
Chasing Bugs through the jungle, they spy him dancing, semi-disguised as one of the "natives." Bugs welcomes them with "Ah! White Men! Welcome to Humuhumunukunukuapua'a'a'a island." He then proceeds to speak in Polynesian-accented nonsense, a long stretch of which is subtitled simply "What's up Doc?" and a very short segment is subtitled, "Now is the time for every good man to come to the aid of his party." The tall and skinny man says, "Well, thanks!" and the short, fat man, actually seeing the peculiar subtitle, "Ofa eno maua te ofe popaa", says "Gee, did you say that?" The skinny man shrugs.
Bugs tricks them by substituting a skinned chicken for himself in the large cooking pot. He taunts them with the chicken, using it as a marionette, until the strings become tangled and he has to make a quick escape.
As the castaways sob in frustration, they hear a steam whistle from a ship. The men leap for joy at the prospect of being saved and trot toward the gangplank. Bugs kisses them goodbye and presents them with leis, then pulls his time-honored switcheroo trick and boards the ship himself. The boat pulls out, leaving the two men on the island, still waving goodbye to Bugs. The Skinny Man slaps the Fat Man (off-camera, following the Hays Office rules) for still yelling "Goodbye!" The two once again imagine each other as a hot dog and a hamburger, chasing each other into the distance as "Aloha Oe" plays on the underscore and the cartoon irises out.
Availability
- VHS - The Very Best Of Bugs
- VHS - A Taste Of Cartoon Network
- Laserdisc - The Golden Age of Looney Tunes Vol. 3, Side 2: Bugs Bunny
- VHS - Looney Tunes: The Collectors Edition Vol. 11: Wabbit Tales
- DVD - Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 3, Disc One (with optional audio commentary by Eddie Fitzgerald and John Kricfalusi)
Goofs
During the sequence where Bugs, dressed in a Hawaiian outfit, speaks Hawaiian to the castaways, subtitles appear in this scene. In the 1995 dubbed version prints (both USA and EU) a blue border appears in this sequence. While the USA dubbed print has the video (pictured at the top of the image below) properly scaled to fit the border in this sequence, the EU dubbed print (pictured at the bottom of the image below) for some reason has the video not scaled properly to fit the border in this sequence, resulting part of the subtitles in this sequence to get cropped off.
USA print (top) and EU print (bottom) of the scene
Note
- A few clips from this, Fresh Hare and Case of the Missing Hare were used in the documentary Square Roots: The Story of SpongeBob SquarePants.
External links
- Wackiki Wabbit at SuperCartoons.net
- Wackiki Wabbit at B99.TV
- Wackiki Wabbit at the Internet Movie Database
also see the List of Bugs Bunny cartoons