User Reviews

Bugs Bunny is one of animation's funniest, most interesting and most iconic characters, and while their series of cartoons was short-lived The Three Bears were every bit as entertaining and their cartoons are very good to great.

While not one of the best of The Three Bears cartoons, 'Bugs Bunny and the Three Bears' having a still-finding-its-feet feel, 'Bugs Bunny and the Three Bears' is a very good and funny start.

The Three Bears are incredibly well realised on the whole, with very distinct and interesting personalities but Mama Bear is a little bland and has the least funny material of the three of them. While much of the animation quality is fine, there are cartoons out there that contain more energy in the movement and the bears are a bit scrappy and less refined in look, especially Mama Bear.

However, as said much of the animation is fine. It is bright, colourful and vibrant, the background art is filled with rich detail and Bugs is very well drawn. Carl Stalling's music is outstanding as always, the orchestration is lush and lively, the rhythms are high in energy and it just adds so much to what's going on on top of fitting brilliantly.

'Bugs Bunny and the Three Bears' is very funny, often hilarious stuff, with the dialogue of Papa Bear and Junyor evoking some very hearty chuckles and the gags being just as witty and fresh, like with Bugs tricking Junyor into giving him the ketchup bottle. Bugs is typically likable and smart, and shares great chemistry with the bears, but Papa Bear and especially Junyor steal the show from under him with both bringing so much personality to the cartoon.

Mel Blanc, Bea Benaderet and Kent Rogers do very good jobs with the voices, though there is a preference to Billy Bletcher over Blanc as Papa Bear (though Blanc is excellent as the character, but he doesn't own the role like Bletcher did) and Stan Freberg over Rogers. The story is not surprising, but is a very clever twist on the famous story and is always paced in a way that ensures that there is not a dull moment.

In conclusion, a good start to The Three Bears series but better followed. 8/10 Bethany Cox

One thing I disliked about this cartoon was the slowness of it. The jokes were slow (not necessarily bad, just slow), the plot moved along slowly and even the animation was slow (in most places, anyway). This was the main thing I found mediocre.

"Bugs Bunny and the Three Bears" has an odd mix of humour. On the one hand, you have very funny and witty verbal jokes, funny Bugs Bunny acts and you have almost "cringey" slapstick and primarily unfunny sight gags. There is a great deal of originality in the cartoon (for those days anyway), which was very entertaining, fun and interesting to watch. On the whole, I thought it was an unusual Looney Tunes cartoon in quality of the different aspects, never have I had the same opinion of each aspect in a LT cartoon before (at least in my memory).

Anyhow, in this cartoon, we meet a small, grumpy father bear, a mummy bear and an utterly impossibly-biologically over-sized baby bear (he is bigger than either of his parents). The father bear is thinking of something or other, while baby bear waits impatiently for breakfast. They eventually decide to do the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Unfortunately they do not have porridge, so they have carrot soup instead. Not surprisingly, this attracts the Bugs Bunny rather than Goldilocks... Cartoon capers commence...

I am not sure whether I will watch this cartoon again, but it was perfectly pleasant at the time. I recommend this to people who like unusually slow Looney Tunes cartoons and to people who like Looney Tunes slapstick. Enjoy "Bugs Bunny and the Three Bears"! :-)

7 and a half out of ten.

Very funny Bugs Bunny short from the great Chuck Jones. This one inserts Bugs into the Goldilocks story, with the Three Bears depicted as a dysfunctional family. They lure Bugs into their home with carrot soup, hoping to eat him. Papa Bear is angry and abusive, Mama Bear is meek and attention-starved, and Junior is an overgrown moron. The voice work is excellent. The music is lively and fits the action well. The animation is terrific, with nicely-drawn characters and backgrounds. Great colors, too. The funnier gags involve Papa Bear smacking Junior around and Bugs seducing Mama Bear. It's one of the many great Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies takes on classic fairy tales.

I started re-watching this for the first time in a long time, and realized about 30 seconds in how unique this short is. I had to rewind it 2 minutes in and time the first shot - EIGHTY SECONDS. The first three shots are almost 4 full minutes long. In all, there are only 10 shots in this entire cartoon - brilliantly paced, inspirational for anyone who wants to learn how to better tell a story.

I have a very hard understanding why this cartoon short only has an IMDb score of 7.1, as it's an amazingly funny cartoon--one of the best Bugs Bunny appearances you can find. In this installment, Bugs' foes are the Three Bears--and these hilarious (and totally politically incorrect) characters are wonderful. Junyer Bear is a complete idiot and Papa Bear is a very short-tempered and ill-tempered father who spends most of the cartoon slapping his son around and trying to catch the bunny. Sure, child abuse isn't really funny--but here is is. I especially loved when the bears were recreating the Goldilocks story and Junyer kept saying "Duh....who's been sleeping in my porridge"--at which point, Papa goes ballistic. As for Momma Bear, she says and does very little...until Bugs woos her! All in all, a very funny and creative short. Well-animated and just plain fun.

This is one of my favorites. Every Character is absolutely hilarious. The Baby Bear being huge while the father is half his size is pure genius. Every time (and I am not promoting child abuse here) he Papa bear whacks Junyer I laugh out loud. Bea Benaderet is great as the ma bear. Stan Freberg was just as funny as Junyer.

You can tell that "Bugs Bunny and the Three Bears" was a pretty early Looney Tunes cartoon, but it has held up well through the years. It has the Three Bears trying to attract Goldilocks with carrot soup, but attracting Bugs Bunny instead. You can probably guess what sorts of things happen from there.

A particularly interesting character here was Junyer Bear. Despite being the youngest cast member, he's the tallest (almost twice as tall as Papa Bear, to be precise). Oh well, this is a cartoon, so there's no reason to obsess on something like that. You're supposed to just sit back and enjoy yourself. And enjoy yourself you will watching this cartoon. Doing the voices of the Looney Tunes for all those years, Mel Blanc was truly a man among men. And although Bea Benaderet wasn't credited (she voices Mama Bear), her role in this and similar cartoons leads me to believe that she must have been a woman among women.

Three bears are hungry; nothing to eat in the entire house except a few old carrots. Papa Bear comes up with an idea: "Let's pretend this is Goldilocks and The Bears." When "Goldilocks" comes, I guess the plan is for the bears to eat their prey.

Mama Bear makes carrot soup. The aroma travels down into Bugs' hole where he literally floats to the house and slurps up all the porridge, er soup. The rest of the animated short involves the bears trying to get Bugs. However, our hero compliments Mama Bear about her eyes and looks....and she's easily taken in with the compliments.

However, that leads to an unsatisfactory end of this story for Bugs!

Overall, a fast-moving story but so-so at best in the humor department.

Bugs Bunny and the Three Bears (1944)

**** (out of 4)

A masterpiece in the animation field has Papa, Mama and Baby bears hungry so they decide to try and lure Goldilocks in with carrot soup but instead they get Bugs Bunny. This take on the classic story is one of the greatest animated movies ever made. While there's nothing too ground breaking or special here, I think the story works so well that it's impossible not to fall for all the charm and laughs. Bugs is his classic, smart self as he's always one step ahead of the bears who are wanting to eat him. He brings plenty of laughs to the screen including a great sequence when he's eating where he tricks the baby bear into getting him some ketchup. What really makes this short memorable are the three bears and their personalities. This short runs just 7-minutes but it's amazing how much personality Jones can get into the film. I love how Mama bear overacts for the camera, how Papa bear is embarrassed to be acting the story out and then there's Baby bear and his dumbness. Some might object to the father beating the son but hey, it's all good fun.

In the first appearance of the three bears characters, Bugs Bunny gets drawn to the smell of the carrot soup that the family trio of bears have left out hoping to catch Goldilocks. The papa Bears constant abuse of the dim-witted baby heuy-type baby bear is priceless and is what makes this cartoon worth watching to me. See the baby bear always reminded me of my one friend so that only added to the humor of the situation. Mama bear is way to quick to attempt to start an extramarital affair though. This cartoon is on Disk 3 of the "Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume 1" It also has an optional commentary

My Grade: B

In this cartoon the Three Bears sit at the dinner table in their ramshackle hut and think of a way to temp some unwitting fool into the cauldron. That unwitting fool ends up being Bugs Bunny. But, as usual, he's to clever to fall for any tricks.

Too bad the outsmarting isn't really so funny or clever. It definitely wasn't the funniest Bugs I've ever seen. I was kind of bored with it very quickly as the start is also kind of slow and humor is not up to scratch. Plus the animation of the Three Bears looks kind of rough and ragged and really distracts your attention.

Don't bother going out your way to catch this 'un.

Without any porridge left the cupboard, the three bears realise they won't be able to attract Goldilocks to their home. With only the old carrots available to eat, they make soup and lure Bugs Bunny into their house. However Bugs proves to be much harder to catch than Goldilocks and the 3 Bears are not getting their fairytale ending.

Bugs Bunny cartoons will always do roughly the same thing every time – Bugs will evade and trick and mock who/what ever is trying to catch him. In this case he is drawn into the fairytale world of the 3 Bears. Cue his usual trademark humour which I found as funny as always here.

Bugs' support characters usually make or break a film and here his foils are mostly pretty funny. The papa bear is a hoot with his impatience and quick temper, the baby bear is slow and dumb and combines well with the father. Only the mother fails to really establish herself, even though she is used in the punchline of the film she is not as strong as the others.

Overall though this is a funny film and the support characters do what they are supposed to do and carry a certain amount of the weight of the comedy and give a foil for Bugs to play off well.

Chuck Jones's 'Bugs Bunny and the Three Bears' kicked off an hysterical series of cartoons featuring Mama and Papa Bear and their over-sized son (voiced by Stan Freberg in his debut Warner Bros. cartoons). Despite some funny moments early on, however, 'Bugs Bunny and the Three Bears' is easily the weakest of the series. The main problem is the presence of Bugs, whose character sits oddly with the bear characters. All the funniest moments are courtesy of the bears and Bugs' antics just get in the way. Not that Bugs actually does that much at all. He turns up, briefly fulfills the regular Goldilocks role and then averts a savaging from Mother Bear with some insincere charm only to fall foul of her amorous advances. It's hardly Bugs' finest hour. He gets to perform just one bit and even that backfires! Aside from these story problems, there are some detrimental differences with the bear characters. Mel Blanc voices Father Bear, a role usually performed brilliantly by Billy Bletcher. While Blanc is still very funny, Bletcher made the role so thoroughly his own that it is retrospectively odd to hear Blanc filling the role. Far more harmful, however, is the scraggy look of the bears. The Mother Bear in particular is often completely grotesque. These unappealing designs would quickly be rectified but they mar 'Bugs Bunny and the Three Bears' further. The main notable thing about this short is that it introduced the Three Bears characters who would go on to star in some truly hilarious cult cartoons. Unfortunately, this first installment is an outing I'm sure both the bears and Bugs would rather forget!

These Three Bears cartoons, of which "Bugs Bunny and the Three Bears" is the first, barely squeak past modern-day TV censors, and couldn't get made today. They feature a domineering patriarch who beats his child and browbeats his wife. Never mind that the cartoon hardly approves of his behavior. These are deadly serious subjects that must ... not ... be ... mocked!

This point of view has two errors. One, deadly serious subjects are the meat of comedy; certainly in Warner Brothers cartoons where the barely hidden themes are death, dismemberment, mayhem, sexual perversion, greed, humiliation, lust, abuse of power and so forth. As Steve Allen often said, comedy is tragedy plus time. Two, Papa Bear is not beating a helpless child or berating a gentle-spirited lady. Baby Bear is enormous, and he's stupid enough to blunt our sympathy. Mama Bear is a drip - and not even a nice drip. She's happy to go along with Papa Bear's cruel scheme to pulverize Bugs Bunny.

That scheme is odd, by the way. Baby Bear assumes they're doing it for food. But there's a strong suggestion that Papa Bear is just looking for some cruel fun. After all, they're not after a rabbit. They re-enact the "Three Bears" story to attract Goldilocks!

They get Bugs Bunny, who handily outwits them. But is Bugs a sexist, as modern scolds would have it? Bugs compliments the alleged beauty of Mama Bear in order to distract her from killing him. Later, when she lustily pursues him, he backs off in terror.

First, Bugs had every right to do what he could to save his life. He certainly didn't owe his would-be murderess an honest appraisal, i.e. that she's repulsive. Second, despite modern-day cant about inner beauty and unconventional beauty, Mama Bear has nothing to offer anyone. She's a homicidal drip.

Then again, audiences never hate her. You have to admire the spirit of a woman who gets one compliment, then immediately blocks every doorway against her admirer, while she wears various would-be attractive garments, or even wears nothing (!), and then shows up at his home to smother the unwilling suitor with kisses. Mama Bear, you're a multifaceted woman.

The animation in this cartoon is oddly crude for Warner Brothers and its director Chuck Jones. Otherwise, this is a top-notch, very funny short and highly recommended to all but prudes, scolds and P.C.-thinkers of all varieties.

This short is available on DVD on "Looney Tunes Golden Collection, Volume Three," Disc 3.