Mad as a Mars Hare (1963) User Reviews

One of my favourite Bugs Bunny episodes.

[Mightyzebra · 8/10 · 7 June 2008]

I personally find this very funny: Bugs Bunny has a very good character in this episode and Marvin is very entertaining and sweet (except of course when he wants to disintegrate Bugs Bunny). Also, I think the animation is very well done.

However, I found this episode perhaps a wee bit too short, but that is probably my only major dislike for this episode.

Lee Eisenberg and bob the moo did not like this episode all that much, although they do present good arguments for the reason they dislike this.

Reasons I like this more than Lee Eisenberg and bob the moo:

1. This is the first episode with Bugs and Marvin in I ever watched, so I do not have the same opinion as them.

2. I prefer a great deal of good quotes in a Looney Tunes episode rather than a great deal of slapstick gags.

In this episode, Bugs Bunny has been sent into space because he is "expendable". He meets Marvin the Martian and that is when the plot really turns...

I recommend this to people who like Looney Tunes characters talking a large amount and to anyone who loves anything about Looney Tunes. Enjoy! :-)

Bugs invades Mars

[Tweekums · 8/10 · 23 September 2009]

Being a fan of Marvin the Martian I enjoyed this short. For once he isn't trying to destroy the Earth with his Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator, in fact in this short it is Mars being invaded by Earth.

The short opens with Marvin observing the people of Earth, which he thinks are insects, through a large telescope. As he zooms in on Florida he observes what he thinks is a creature hatching, in fact it is a rocket heading straight for him. This rocket contains astro-rabbit Bugs Bunny who has been sent to claim Mars in the name of Earth. Understandably Marvin isn't too happy about this alien intruder and goes out to confront Bugs with his disintegration gun... of course it isn't Bugs that ends up getting disintegrated.

Some people have said that this is too talky but I didn't mind that in fact any time Marvin talks is great as he is such a funny character, his comments about the people of Earth were hilarious.

Enjoyable, but it is too talky to be considered a classic in my book

[TheLittleSongbird · 7/10 · 7 February 2010]

This is a real shame, that this cartoon isn't a classic for while it is entertaining it has too many flaws for me to consider it a classic. While the animation is very well done and detailed, the vocal characterisations of Mel Blanc are top notch and the music is beautiful, what let it down is that it is too talky. It is good that there is dialogue and all that, but there is too much of it. Consequently the jokes don't work as well as it should. Also it may be just me, but I found the dialogue rather hit and miss. There are some good lines like "wait a minute, are you out of your CottonTail mind?" and "because rabbits are expendable that's why" but Marvin is given very little to do because his dialogue isn't that much to go on. Overall, decent but it isn't a favourite of mine unfortunately. 7/10 Bethany Cox

Reverse the descriptions of Siberia and Miami Beach, please.

[lee_eisenberg · 6/10 · 11 February 2007]

I have read about how Warner Bros. closed the Looney Tunes department in 1963. That might have actually been a good choice, considering that they seemed to be running a little short of ideas by then. In "Mad as a Mars Hare", Bugs Bunny gets sent to Mars as an expendable astro-rabbit, but Marvin the Martian has no desire to have anyone else on his planet and starts plotting to get rid of Bugs.

Whereas previous Bugs-Marvin pairings focused on Bugs's gags aimed at Marvin, this one has a little too much talk. Don't get me wrong; any Chuck Jones cartoon is a good one - at least the ones that I've seen - but it seems like they could have had more than just the characters explaining their stories. And if I may say so, I must challenge what Bugs said about Mars making Siberia look like Miami Beach. I spent last autumn in Yekaterinburg, Russia (near Siberia) and had a great time there. Everything that I've heard about Miami and it's surrounding area make it sound very undesirable. If it makes me some sort of weirdo to prefer part of Russia to part of America, then so be it.

Anyway, "MAAMH" is an OK cartoon, but not great.

Marvin has some hilarious and terribly pithy lines in this very talky short.

[llltdesq · 10/10 · 12 October 2003]

Most of the gags in this are verbal in nature, rather than sight gags (though it has a fair number of those as well) and Marvin may have more of the best lines than Bugs, particularly in the beginning. As is often the case, the title is a play on words-in this case, "mad as a March hare", which I believe was derived from Alice in Wonderland. Marvin's comments on "the flora and fauna of Earth likely would have delighted H. L. Mencken and Ambrose Bierce! The ending scene is beautiful, particularly the closing line. Great fun is had by all (well, not by Marvin, not at the end, anyway). Well worth watching. Most highly recommended.

"Brace yourself for immediate disintegration."

[utgard14 · 6/10 · 22 September 2015]

Marvin the Martian is surveying the Earth through his telescope when he spots a rocket launch from Cape Canaveral. Sure enough, the rocket's headed his way and on board is Bugs Bunny. When Bugs crash lands, he finds Marvin is none too pleased that an Earth creature has come to "contaminate my atmosphere." This is the last appearance of Marvin the Martian in a classic era Looney Tunes short and it's an enjoyable one, if not particularly great. The gags are okay and the dialogue sometimes amusing. There's a lot of dialogue in this one, too. Good voice work from the incomparable Mel Blanc. The music is a little 'blah' and generic. The animation is nice and colorful. There's something off about the whole thing. I'll put it down to Jones having one foot out of the door, about to leave Warner Bros. The Bugs here is also more reminiscent of later Bugs than classic Bugs, too, which is part of the problem. Still, it's watchable and even fun in spots. Bugs fans should like it fine.

Too much talk not enough jokes

[bob the moo · 28 December 2003]

Sent to Mars in place of a human, the expendable Bugs Bunny arrives to find Marvin the alien on Mars and not to happy to have the company and immediately greets him armed to the teeth with space age ray guns.

It's been a while since I have seen a Bugs Bunny cartoon with Marvin and this film was welcome to me for that reason. However this film is not very good. The first half of the film seems to be mostly talk - Marvin explaining himself and then Bugs filling in the audience as to why he was put on a rocket by NASA. The problem is that this isn't very funny and it takes up half the time of the film!

The rest of the film really only consists of two gags around the use of the ray gun, and these aren't that funny either. Bugs is also not himself - he isn't given the chance to do any real trickery and the punchline betrays his character totally. Marvin is OK and does his `that makes me very angry' line a few times, but he can't carry the short.

Overall this cartoon is a shame because it is a missed opportunity - both Bugs and Marvin are funny and have made some good cartoons together; sadly this isn't one of them.

Chuck Jones Conquers Mars

[Julian9ehp · 9/10 · 20 November 2015]

Chuck Jones wins for Marvin and Bugs, using them freshly in this late cartoon. He wins against the horrible score by Bill Lava, even using it to advantage in the mechanical carrot scene. He wins against a limited set of backgrounds, and the wide-screen madness of movies in the early '60s. (Few pans, few camera movements, thick outlines for the characters.) He even wins against his own tendency for too much talk and too much exposition. He still draws well, he still has good writers, and he still has many good jokes. Even with the ending (no spoilers), which frightened me so when I was a child, I'd recommend this cartoon to almost everyone.

Bugs Bunny co-stars here with Marvin-the-Spartan . . .

[oscaralbert · 7/10 · 26 July 2015]

. . . decked out in a green leotard complemented by white sneakers, the school uniform of the early 1960s on Michigan State University's East Lansing campus. (Just as Wisconsin Badger fans sport cheese wedge hats, Warner Bros.' animators--always sticklers for Real Life accuracy--draw in broom bristles atop Sparty, I mean Marvin's head, another common sight around Ingham County, denoting MSU's annual sweeps versus their beleaguered intra-state rival, the U-M teams). Inexplicably, Marvin's antagonist here (an Orange-garbed Bugs Bunny) seems to represent Syracuse U., rather than the Spartans' primary traditional rival, our University of Maryland. Marvin inhabits a Florida island nine seconds away from Cape Canaveral by rocket. Surgeons from MSU's Large Animal Department have replaced his brain with that of a Wolverine, so he thinks that he's on STAR TREK. (You can tell this because Marvin says one crazy thing after another.) The East Lansing pranksters who've paired Bugs with Marvin trick Bugs into eating an aluminum carrot early on. The Syracuse bunny muses, "Why do I like carrots, anyway? There's not much meat on them, and they're kind of dry." Obviously, the MAD AS A HARE writer slipped this Double Entendre in to further disparage the U of M carrot-helmeted Woverines.

Not just "as a Mars hare" as he really is one

[Horst_In_Translation · 6/10 · 4 September 2017]

"Mad as a Mars Hare" is an American cartoon from 1963, so this one is already over half a century old and it includes some of Warner Bros' greatest again in Chuck Jones, Mel Blanc and John W. Dunn, who was also really prolific back then, even if his name may not be as known as some other cartoon writers for WB. Anyway, the antagonist here is once again the Martian, a character who is not as prolific as Elmer and Sam for example, but still the films in which he appears all made it somehow famous, perhaps because of the SciFi space element. And it is somewhat entertaining. The film is perhaps at its best when the two protagonists aren't united yet and when we are introduced to them, especially the scenes with Bugs refusing to step outside the rocket. What a difference a carrot makes. But the Neanderthal scene at the end was fine too. Overall, it is a well-rounded entertaining effort and I cannot deny I have a soft spot for the Martian too. Needless to say Blanc's once again spot-on with his voice acting for the little guy here. The man's a legend. The film's a winner. Go check it out.