Hit or Miss: Knights Must Fall

[Daffysleftfoot]

This cartoon has everything on it's side. Friz Freleng in his prime, Bugs Bunny in his prime, Michael Maltese and/or Tedd Pierce in their prime, Virgil Ross and Gerry Chiniquy in their primes as well. Technically the story works well. Bugs gets into a confrontation with a knight. He has some trouble at first but overcomes it in spades at the end.

This has all the makings of one of the best Bugs Bunny cartoons of all time. And yet it kind of falls flat with me. I don't find it horrible by any means but it still falls waaaay short of other Bugs masterpieces made around that time like Long Haired Hare, High Diving Hare, Bowery Bugs, Rebel Rabbit, or The Windblown Hare.

Now for your thoughts.

[angilbas]

Hit. Freleng skilfully blends a medieval setting with contemporary stadium gags ("Here we are at ye jousting arena," the commentator says into the mike. "Can't tell a knight from a day without a program," says the handbill vendor) while presenting Bugs as an underdog we can root for. To say that its pacing and craftsmanship are on-par with other Warner's releases of 1949 is to offer a compliment.


-Tony

[UncleJunior]

Usually, most of Freleng's Bugs Bunny cartoons are underrated. Not this one. This one wasn't that great.

Most of the gags weren't funny.

[J Lee]

Part of the problem with this cartoon is it just doesn't flow -- if you look at it, it's really just a series of jousting-related gags hung together by the thinnest thread of Bugs dropping a spent carrot stub down the knight's pants. While you can't say Bugs is as aggressive here as in some of Clampett's cartoons (or Jones' later "Hare-Breadth Hurry"), he is the one who causes the problems in the first place, instead of being the victim, as was the case in most of the best rabbit toons.

I still like some of the gags here, so it's not a big miss, but it's definitely lesser Bugs.