User Reviews

What's Up Doc? is a pretty amusing, if not hilarious, cartoon from director Robert McKimson about Bugs Bunny's rise in show biz. As a child, he learns to play Franz Lizst on the piano. Then as an adult, he starts in the chorus in various musical revues. Bugs blows his big chance, however, when his solo act only gets crickets chirping (a familiar cartoon gag for when a performer bombs). Down on his luck, he sits on a park bench with Al Jolson, Jack Benny, Eddie Cantor, and Bing Crosby when headliner Elmer Fudd walks by. Fudd rejects everybody as they do their trademark cues except Bugs. Bugs is basically a stooge to Elmer so he switches punchlines in New York which causes an angry Fudd to get a rifle in the wabbit's face making Bugs say, "What's Up Doc?" for the first time. As he notices the audience eat it up, he tells Elmer to say it again. He does and the applause gets louder! That leads to their first screen test at Warner Bros. where Bugs sings "What's Up Doc?" with Elmer singing and dancing along at the end. Having told all this to a female reporter, Bugs looks at his watch and says he's due on the set for his next starring role. As the curtain with his initials goes up, we see him singing and dancing with...those same chorus boys he performed earlier with in his career! Like I said mostly amusing if not hilarious though I loved many of the jokes that Elmer and Bugs did in the vaudeville segments. And the celebrity voices done mostly by Mel Blanc were spot on. Anyone who saw the live-action What's Up, Doc? that starred Barbra Streisand and Ryan O'Neal should be very familiar with the "What's Up Doc?" number since that sequence appeared at the end of that movie. This short is part of Volume one of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection.

The film begins with Bugs at his palatial mansion being interviewed by a Hollywood columnist. She asks him to recall his rise to stardom from his earliest days on Vaudeville (when he was continually pelted with pies by his partner Elmer) to the accidental switching of roles to Bugs' attempt to make it on Broadway singing in the chorus. It's all cute fun and leads up the the cartoon's conclusion when Bugs shows that he's finally made it on screen and begins acting his big scene---an exact duplicate of his chorus days on Broadway. I liked this cute ending but doubt if the average kid would really understand the joke.

As always, the production values are tops and this is a highly entertaining film.

"What's Up Doc?" is a fairly known quote from all these Bugs Bunny short films that comes up again and again and here we have the short film with the same title that shows us how it was created. This cartoons runs for 7 minutes and has McKimson, Foster and Blanc work on it, some of Warner Bros' most known and most prolific. It depicts the early days of Bugs' life and career as we see him as a baby rabbit (cute!) and as an aspiring artist with a rocky road to stardom as well as the crowd did not love him initially. But Elmer makes him a star and this short film tells us that all the Bugs Bunny cartoons we watch are actually show and acted by everybody we see in there, not real life. An interesting new perspective. As a whole, this was an okay short film, the highlight was certainly the scene with the caricatures of famous (actually existing) actors who lost their fame and I like it in particular because it was also a bit critical about the industry. Luckily, Bugs managed to get back and really launch his big career unlike the others. Good cartoon, I recommend the watch.

"What's Up Doc?" is a very clever Bugs Bunny/Elmer Fudd cartoon directed by Robert McKimson. In this film, Bugs is a full-fledged dancer, singer, and all-around entertainer who struggles for his big break in show business. He teams up with fellow vaudevillian Elmer Fudd and, after upstaging & infuriating him, stumbles upon the catchphrase "Eh, what's up, Doc?" and the crowd goes wild!

Highlights: Bugs as a toddler is given a toy piano by his parents, so he immediately bangs away at one of Franz Liszt's famous Hungarian Rhapsodies! It's pure vaudeville when Bugs & Elmer swap one-liners, pies, seltzer bottles, mallets, and yuk-yuk-yuks. At a Warner Bros. screen test, Bugs & Elmer sing "What's Up Doc?" together on stage while Bugs pulls a few of his tricks on Elmer. Bugs as a hobo sits on a park bench next to fellow hoboes Al Jolson, Jack Benny, Eddie Cantor, and Bing Crosby (all very nicely caricatured). And finally, "Oh, we're the boys in the chorus, / We hope you like our show. / We know you're rootin' for us, / But now we have to gooooooo."

"What's Up Doc?" is an enjoyable cartoon that I had never seen until I obtained the DVD (Disc 1 of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume 1), and I believe it is definitely worth seeing. Bugs Bunny goes through a fair amount of adventure (and misadventure) as he climbs up (and down) the hierarchal ladder of show business.

. . . refers to the catcher's specialized defensive gear. In the Looney Tunes Universe, "Tools of Ignorance" invariably denotes firearms, from Yosemite Sam's pistols to Elmer Fudd's long guns. Mr. Fudd is depicted as a patronizing bully to Bugs Bunny as soon as the former makes an appearance in WHAT'S UP, DOC? But as a Wealthy One Per Center, normal folks such as Bugs have to Kow-Tow to Fudd's every perverse whim. However, sensing that he could lose his status as Top Dog in the Looney Tunes Animated Shorts Universe to the more talented Bugs, Elmer introduces a shooting iron on the WHAT'S UP, DOC? scene 5 minutes, 21 seconds into this story. As soon as Mr. Fudd resorts to such a False Security Blanket, Bugs has the upper hand. It's now Elmer who's second fiddling for the remainder of this tale, forced to wield his "tool of ignorance" as a perpetual reminder that careers that live by the gun, die by gun. Move over Jesse James, John Dillinger, and Wild Bill: make room for Elmer Fudd!