The Stupid Cupid (1944) User Reviews

A great cartoon, the beginning is skippable

[Mightyzebra · 8/10 · 16 March 2009]

I really enjoyed this Daffy Duck and Elmer cartoon (with Elmer as Cupid in a nappy). It has cheerful animation, good music, interesting themes and entertaining storyline and I love the references to "The Henpecked Duck", a cartoon which had been made 3 years before this and is one of my personal favourites. This cartoon is also one of my favourites, but I would like it much more if it did not have its mainly boring, silly, slapsticky beginning which is only worth watching for people who do not know about Cupid and need to understand what Cupid does (but not why, that is never explained...).

Anyhow, in this cartoon, Elmer, as Cupid, is just about to randomly shoot Daffy Duck when the little black duck spots him and complains about the last time he was shot, how he fell in love with a horrible wife (like in "The Henpecked Duck") and had too many children for him to cope with. However, later, Cupid re-shoots him anyway. Daffy falls in love with a chicken, of all people, who is already in love... Crazy capers commence...

I recommend this cartoon to people who like fun, old Looney Tunes and who like a romantic, maniac and crazy Daffy Duck. Enjoy "Stupid Cupid"! :-)

quite hilarious, but you gotta admit that Elmer looks weird in a diaper

[lee_eisenberg · 8/10 · 18 September 2007]

We often see images of Cupid shooting people with arrows and making them fall in love, but what if the people didn't want his arrows? That's the premise of Frank Tashlin's "The Stupid Cupid". In this case, Cupid (played by Elmer Fudd) shoots people with arrows with suction cups...and the subsequent love is more like the sort of relationships that one would expect to see in the 1970s.

Anyway, when the little guy prepares to shoot Daffy Duck, Daffy resists and explains how their encounter the previous year led to Daffy's unhappy marriage and excess children (needless to say, Daffy says this at near breakneck speed). Finally, Cupid manages to shoot Daffy, and...well, let's just say that what follows is the sort of stuff that I couldn't have even predicted in a classic Warner Bros. cartoon! I just gotta wonder how much fun they must have had creating this stuff.

So, while this may not have been the greatest cartoon that they made, it's certainly a hilarious one. Preceding the main plot line, there's even one of the "now I've seen everything" gags (if you're unfamiliar with these, then you'll understand it once you see the cartoon). Really funny.

If seeing Elmer playing Cupid and shooting Daffy with suction cup-tipped arrows is your idea of fun, this is the cartoon for you-and you need to get out more!

[llltdesq · 8/10 · 27 November 2006]

This is a very funny cartoon, pitting two of the Looney Tunes stars against each other in a somewhat unusual battle of wills. Because I want to discuss some of the details of this short, this is a spoiler warning:

The opening shows a very cherubic-looking Elmer Fudd, flitting around and shooting animals with arrows to make them fall in love. All goes well (at least from "Cupid's" perspective) until he comes face to face with Daffy Duck, who launches into a particularly inspired rant about his life before and after his last encounter with the arrow-aiming menace to an orderly society, which he feels ruined a carefree single life. He closes by punctuating his point, using Elmer himself to do so. Obviously, at this point, the gauntlet has been flung down.

Elmer shoots Daffy and Daffy starts chasing after a very unsettled hen. Said hen is married, to a large and very disturbed rooster, who pointedly wants to know why Daffy is after HIS wife. Daffy explains to the rooster and his "charming Mrs." that his behavior is the fault of that "stupid Cupid", explains that he's also a family man-complete with a carload of his brood as evidence and generally grovels shamelessly (which is infinitely better than picking up your beak from the floor after a jealous rooster punches you into next Thursday) until the rooster allows that it might just all be an innocent misunderstanding. The rooster lets Daffy go and Daffy goes out gratefully-only to be shot by Elmer again and interpose himself between rooster and hen in the midst of their reconciliation. The visual scene here is marvelous and Daffy is in trouble again! This short is available on the Looney Tunes Golden Collection, Volume 4 and is well worth seeing-and so are all four of the Looney Tunes Golden Collections which have been released thus far. I truly hope that all of the remaining Warner Brothers shorts eventually find a home on future Golden Collections. Recommended.

Wild sight gags!

[slymusic · 23 April 2007]

"The Stupid Cupid" is an excellent Daffy Duck/Elmer Fudd cartoon directed by Frank Tashlin. Elmer plays the Stupid Cupid, complete with diapers and a tiny derby, shooting love arrows at various animals while having a devilish smile on his face! Daffy becomes one of his helpless victims.

Highlights from this cartoon include the following (but don't read any further until after you have actually seen it for yourself). Elmer opens the cartoon by running & skipping all over the countryside and interrupting the "Voices of Spring" musical accompaniment with a few laughs. When he shoots a horse in the rear with an arrow, the horse goes absolutely bonkers after smooching a mare! Daffy goes through some of the strangest bodily contortions when he warns the mischievous Elmer to back off. Elmer shoots a gigantic arrow at Daffy, causing him to crash through numerous barns, a fence, a silo, and a tree; Daffy then amorously rushes over to a hen while his heart pounds to a Latin percussion rhythm. In order to make peace with the hen's jealous husband (a muscular rooster), Daffy proves he's a family man himself by rushing out of a barn, driving by the barn with his wife & assorted kiddies stuffed in the car, and rushing back into the barn, all within the limited space of a few seconds! And finally, we have a terrific visual AND audio effect when Daffy gets shot in the rear by Elmer after making peace with the rooster.

"The Stupid Cupid" is a brilliant cartoon! Director Frank Tashlin stops at NOTHING in order to induce loud laughter from the wildest sight gags. Never mind any crude animation or the rather abrupt ending; "The Stupid Cupid" is quite a gem in the Warner Bros. library of cartoons.

Warner Bros. uses STUPID CUPID to inform us . . .

[oscaralbert · 7/10 · 29 June 2016]

. . . that just because you fall in love with something doesn't make it RIGHT! For instance, Elmer Fudd as the title character here notices that a bulldog is harassing a cat, so he pumps a Love Connection Arrow into the canine's butt. The mutt immediately adopts the accents of Pepe LePew when that skunk is wooing Penelope. However, Rover's feline victim is NOT amused, as she's shown well on her way to shooting herself in the head the nine times necessary to commit cat suicide once and for all. The rest of Elmer\Puck's Forced Matings are equally tragic misfires. Notice that Warner did not title this lesson as BRILLIANT CUPID, or even SILLY CUPID. The Looney Tuners went out on a limb to make an editorial judgment here: Elmer's insistence on trying to pound square pegs into round holes makes him a STUPID CUPID! Warner is preparing America for a day when that DSM Cookbook at Psychology Today is taken over by the Man-Boy Love Connection (an actual group numbering many shrinks among its members). On that day, Americans will realize that they've been totally bamboozled to "grow" toward tolerating, accepting, and abetting a moving target of "inclusion" which finds them dipping a toe into the Lowest Circle of Hell by the 21st Century. Like frogs in a pot brought to a slow boil, we failed to jump out as the water warmed until our goose was cooked! Just don't say that we weren't warned here by Warner's STUPID CUPID.

Elmer Fudd as The Stupid Cupid? Well, I guess that makes sense!

[TheLittleSongbird · 9/10 · 8 July 2010]

I really enjoyed The Stupid Cupid. Admittedly it is a little on the bizarre side, but it is quite funny as well. The cartoon does start off a little slow, but there is a lot that more than makes up for it. The story is simple but fairly effective. The animation is very nice, with lovely colours and good character features. The music is my favourite asset though, it was put to perfect use and quite pleasant and quirky to listen to. The dialogue particularly that of Daffy's is funny, while there are some interesting sight gags such as the cat shooting herself and we see her shooting each of her nine lives and Daffy falling in love with a chicken. Elmer's facial expressions were pretty funny too. Elmer is still dim-witted and clueless, and while he looks and sounds different(being voiced by Mel Blanc rather than Arthur Q. Bryan) he is a good foil, while Daffy is lots of fun as always.

Overall, an enjoyable cartoon, not perfect but worth watching. 9/10 Bethany Cox

Absolutely bizarre and not that funny

[phantom_tollbooth · 4/10 · 9 January 2009]

Frank Tashlin's 'The Stupid Cupid' is a weird cartoon which suffers from some bizarre plotting and the bad miscasting of Elmer Fudd. Elmer plays the role of Cupid, causing animals to fall in love with partners of varying appropriateness. Elmer looks horrible in this cartoon, not just because he's been redesigned as Cupid but because his poses and facial expressions are really awkwardly drawn and animated. Tashlin also makes him really annoying, largely forsaking dialogue for an annoying take on Elmer's famous laugh. The best moments of 'The Stupid Cupid' are the early scenes of different animals falling in love, including a great sequence with a horse, a notoriously difficult creature to animate, something which Tashlin makes look easy. However, when Daffy Duck enters the cartoon, suddenly it takes a downturn and ugly-Elmer is not the only problem any more. Daffy has always been my favourite cartoon character of all time but the plot he is given here is not only weak but squished into a small amount of time since much of the cartoon has already passed. Elmer has Daffy fall in love with an unsuspecting chicken, whom he pursues even more aggressively than Pepe Le Pew! There's a great sequence towards the end where Daffy begs the chicken's rooster boyfriend for mercy but it leads to an abrupt and unsatisfying ending which seems to suggest there was a climactic gag cut out. It's the final nail in the coffin for 'The Stupid Cupid', a bizarre cartoon which has one or two nice moments but is, overall, amongst my least favourite of Tashlin's shorts.