Sunday, March 18, 2007

Baby Looney Tunes, Volume 3: Puddle Olympics


We've had the "Muppet Babies," the "Baby Einsteins," and the "Tiny Tune Adventures." So why not "Baby Looney Tunes"? The filmmakers clearly aimed these cartoons at the youngest members of the family and began to air them on television around 2002. Take them for what they are, extremely juvenile and politically correct versions of WB's Looney Tunes characters as children. Warner Bros. mean for each of the eight episodes in this third volume, subtitled "Puddle Olympics," not only to entertain little ones but to teach them life lessons as well. No harm in that, although I should think a whole disc full of them might be a long haul for adults.

The problem is that I think of the Looney Tunes gang as truly looney, bashing each other over the head and blowing each other up. Here, they are sweet little tykes learning cooperation, sportsmanship, the importance of a good education, and other such meaningful but, for adults, tedious lessons. Somehow, it just doesn't seem the same. I suppose the idea is that the old Warner Bros. cartoons are too violent for today's youngsters, and, who knows, maybe that's why we find the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries so filled with wars, crime, sex, and rampant degeneration. But I doubt it.

Anyway, each of these episodes lasts ten or eleven minutes, and every other one has a song tagged onto the end of it. Michael Hack and Scott Heming directed most of the series, and Ian James Corlett (Baby Taz), Janyse Jaud (Melissa Duck), Terry Klassen (Baby Sylvester), Britt McKillip (Baby Lola), Chiarra Zanni (Petunia), and Sam Vincent (Baby Bugs, Baby Daffy, Baby Tweety) did most of the voice characterizations. June Foray again voices Granny, as she has done amongst many other live roles and cartoon voices during a career in TV and movies spanning seven decades now. Amazing.

The first cartoon, "Time and Time Again," is pretty typical of the collection. The story line is bland and simplistic, and most of the action is limited to talk, with a lesson involved about learning to tell time. Do kids really need to be taught how to tell time, or is it something that everyone simply learns subconsciously as a matter of growing up? Here, the cartoon gang learn about the hazards of not learning to tell time. I really missed the crazy antics of these characters grown older. When the regular feature is over, the filmmakers add on a song, "Does Your Tongue Hang Low?" It's cute, but it is unrelated to the story it follows. As the cartoons went on, I kept wondering why WB hadn't made more of an effort to incorporate the songs into the story lines.

"May the Best Taz Win" centers around a badminton game. Like the other episodes, the setting is Granny's Victorian mansion in the country, an idyllic, bucolic place where the sun is almost always shining and the trees are always green. Since Granny loves animals, she appears to be raising a whole house full of them. The question is how such sweet and innocent animal children could have grown up to be such mischievous (and violent) animal adults. And a better question would be how such boring children could grow up to be such interesting and entertaining adults. At any rate, in this one, nobody wants Baby Taz on their team, but in time they all learn the value of cooperation, and they even have more fun that way.

"Mine!" is about Daffy, Bugs, and Sylvester arguing over finding Granny's wallet. The obvious lesson is not to mess with things that don't belong to you, but that isn't what I noticed. What I saw was that Tweety was the only character who didn't look or sound any different as a child than as a grown-up. Maybe Tweety never grew up? He's the Peter Pan of bird land? I dunno. After that, the filmmakers add the song "Over the Burrow," and it lasts about a minute.

We've had the "Muppet Babies," the "Baby Einsteins," and the "Tiny Tune Adventures." So why not "Baby Looney Tunes"? The filmmakers clearly aimed these cartoons at the youngest members of the family and began to air them on television around 2002. Take them for what they are, extremely juvenile and politically correct versions of WB's Looney Tunes characters as children. Warner Bros. mean for each of the eight episodes in this third volume, subtitled "Puddle Olympics," not only to entertain little ones but to teach them life lessons as well. No harm in that, although I should think a whole disc full of them might be a long haul for adults.

The problem is that I think of the Looney Tunes gang as truly looney, bashing each other over the head and blowing each other up. Here, they are sweet little tykes learning cooperation, sportsmanship, the importance of a good education, and other such meaningful but, for adults, tedious lessons. Somehow, it just doesn't seem the same. I suppose the idea is that the old Warner Bros. cartoons are too violent for today's youngsters, and, who knows, maybe that's why we find the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries so filled with wars, crime, sex, and rampant degeneration. But I doubt it.

Anyway, each of these episodes lasts ten or eleven minutes, and every other one has a song tagged onto the end of it. Michael Hack and Scott Heming directed most of the series, and Ian James Corlett (Baby Taz), Janyse Jaud (Melissa Duck), Terry Klassen (Baby Sylvester), Britt McKillip (Baby Lola), Chiarra Zanni (Petunia), and Sam Vincent (Baby Bugs, Baby Daffy, Baby Tweety) did most of the voice characterizations. June Foray again voices Granny, as she has done amongst many other live roles and cartoon voices during a career in TV and movies spanning seven decades now. Amazing.

The first cartoon, "Time and Time Again," is pretty typical of the collection. The story line is bland and simplistic, and most of the action is limited to talk, with a lesson involved about learning to tell time. Do kids really need to be taught how to tell time, or is it something that everyone simply learns subconsciously as a matter of growing up? Here, the cartoon gang learn about the hazards of not learning to tell time. I really missed the crazy antics of these characters grown older. When the regular feature is over, the filmmakers add on a song, "Does Your Tongue Hang Low?" It's cute, but it is unrelated to the story it follows. As the cartoons went on, I kept wondering why WB hadn't made more of an effort to incorporate the songs into the story lines.

"May the Best Taz Win" centers around a badminton game. Like the other episodes, the setting is Granny's Victorian mansion in the country, an idyllic, bucolic place where the sun is almost always shining and the trees are always green. Since Granny loves animals, she appears to be raising a whole house full of them. The question is how such sweet and innocent animal children could have grown up to be such mischievous (and violent) animal adults. And a better question would be how such boring children could grow up to be such interesting and entertaining adults. At any rate, in this one, nobody wants Baby Taz on their team, but in time they all learn the value of cooperation, and they even have more fun that way.

"Mine!" is about Daffy, Bugs, and Sylvester arguing over finding Granny's wallet. The obvious lesson is not to mess with things that don't belong to you, but that isn't what I noticed. What I saw was that Tweety was the only character who didn't look or sound any different as a child than as a grown-up. Maybe Tweety never grew up? He's the Peter Pan of bird land? I dunno. After that, the filmmakers add the song "Over the Burrow," and it lasts about a minute.

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