So much average

Fresh and Exciting

Absolutely Fantastic

Wow! What a bizarre film! Unfortunately the few funny moments there were were quite overshadowed by it's completely weird and random vibe throughout.

Although IMDb indicates that Warner Brothers pulled this one from circulation because of the way it portrayed Indians, it IS available from at least two sources--as an extra with "The Maltese Falcon" (1941) as well as on "Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Academy Award-Nominated Animation: Cinema Favorites" (which is how I saw it).The film is pretty much like a Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd cartoon except that instead of Elmer, you have a cute American Indian character that is a lot like Elmer. Whether folks actually find this offensive, I have no idea at all. However, ALL of Bugs' foils look stupid--so I don't think Looney Tunes was singling out Indians.This cartoon, by the way, marks the second year in a row that this brand-new character, Bugs, was nominated for an Academy Award. Previously he was nominated for "A Wild Hare". And, like "A Wild Hare", the animation in "Hiawatha's Rabbit Hunt" is exquisite--much nicer than the later Bugs cartoons.

. . . it is still occasionally funny seven plus decades after its release. Merrie Melodies producer Leon Schlesinger could have chosen to make Bugs Bunny the "Hiawatha" Native American character here, but everyone knew that the voice of Bugs--Mel Blanc--was a white guy ("blanc" even means "white" in French). Bugs always needed to be the sharpest knife in the drawer under the rules of Merrie Melodies, and everyone else needed to be portrayed as a bumbling idiot. The doltish clown could be a farm animal, such as a pig, or it could be a historical or literary figure known to the target audience, such as "Hiawatha." The latter was a character in a long poem 100 years old by the time the cartoon came out, dreamed up by a member of the Authors playing card deck named Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (who had a bushy gray beard to cover up facial scars incurred when his wife stood too close to the fireplace and burned to death, despite the author's futile efforts to quench her flames). American school teachers used to punish young children by making them memorize and recite the sonorous opening of this interminable piece, with the kid parroting back the most lines gaining the same sort of freakish recognition as the child reciting the number pi to the most decimal places. As you may guess, a lot more kids watching this in their local Bijou were pulling for Bugs (not a character in Longfellow's Hiawatha) than the ill-fated Native American!

As this short opens Bugs is reading part of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem Hiawatha; it concerns the eponymous Indian hunting a rabbit in the forest. At this point Bugs realises that he is himself a rabbit! He also soon realises that he is being hunted by an Indian. The Indian searches for bugs and eventually finds him bathing in his own cook pot; when he attempts to light a fire under the pot Bugs helps him; commenting that he hasn't had a hot bath for a while! It isn't until some time later that bugs realises that his nice hot bath is intended to become a rabbit stew! He runs off and the Indian keeps trying to catch him with the inevitable lack of success.This early Bugs Bunny cartoon was pretty funny in places; the Indian hunter bears a clear resemblance to Elmer Fudd. I didn't think the portrayal of the Indian was particularly offensive although Bug's mimicry of stereotypes of Native Americans could be seen as offensive to some I suspect. The best gag was the cook pot scene although the time Bugs lures her pursuer over a cliff was pretty funny too. The appearance of Bugs may seem odd to people who are more used to the way he looks in later shorts but I quite like the way he looks here.

This short, nominated for an Oscar, is a good, not great, cartoon. It does introduce a bit of Longfellow and any Bugs Bunny is a good cartoon and worth watching. There just isn't anything terribly funny or special about this particular cartoon besides the poem sections read at the beginning and end. But it is worth watching. It runs periodically on Cartoon Network.