Hiawatha's Rabbit Hunt (Friz Freleng, 1941)
I agree with Antares' assessment of this one. A full eight minutes of Bugs reading from Longfellow's
The Song of Hiawatha could have been pretty great, though. Little Hiawatha himself isn't a very good adversary for the rabbit here. I was also weirdly bothered that a film this short could have problems with plotting and structure: The story opens with Bugs freaking out that Hiawatha is there to hunt him, but then in the next scene, he's surprised Hiawatha is there to hunt him. Come on, guys, you're better than that.
Grade: C
Little Hiawatha (David Hand, 1937)
Greater familiarity with this Silly Symphonies short from four years earlier would have increased my appreciation of the Looney Tunes take-off thereof.
Little Hiwatha doesn't go for laughs, really; it's just an onslaught of cute. And in that regards, it succeeds, starting with the contrast with the young Hiawatha pictured here and the mighty warrior of Longfellow's poem. As in
Hiawatha's Rabbit Hunt, the film opens and closed with read quotations from
The Song of Hiawatha and the first prey that the hunter spots is a rabbit. In the Disney version, though, the rabbit is an irresistibly cute creature that Hiawatha can't bring himself to kill, not even when Hiawatha offers the bunny a miniature bow and arrow to make it a fair fight.
By giving up the hunt, the young warrior earns the love of every animal in the forest, except for one angry bear protecting its young. The second sequence of the film (distinct from the Looney Tunes parody) is an extended chase sequence, as Hiawatha the hunter becomes the hunted, and his new animal friends (auditioning for roles in Hand's
Bambi) work together to help him escape the angry bear (an inversion from Longfellow, where Hiwatha kills the Great Bear of the mountains). Again, it's all very appealing and cute, though perhaps minimally so, rarely rising about the level of pleasant. The film's only real gag involve Hiawatha's pants falling down, a joke the film repeats about five times, to the point where it becomes annoying.
Grade: B-
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