Takes itself way too seriously

Excellent but underrated film

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

. . . and "Mike Mulligan & His Steam Shovel" (both children's picture books by Virginia Burton), Bugs Bunny finds his town hole threatened by a construction foreman. After four minutes of back and forth (in which Bugs generally prevails), an amusing sequence begins with Warner Bros.' favorite rabbit getting "Girdered." This leads to the dazed hare flirting with disaster high above the city, not unlike the BABY'S DAY OUT film and story. When a bucket of rain water saves the day, Bugs uses a red hot bolt to combine THE PRICE IS RIGHT's "Plinko Game" with a Rube Goldberg-like mechanical sequence to gain the upper hand in his fight to preserve his home. In nearly every American city today you can find evidence is the older parts of town of similar victories won by the "little guy" against the building sprawl of Big Interests. There are no such zoning anomalies in the newer sections of the city, ever since the Greedy Fat Cats invented the legal theft concept of "Eminent Domain."

Chuck Jones's 'Homeless Hare' is a fantastic example of a simple premise made brilliant by great writing and genius direction. Pitting Bugs Bunny against a bullying construction worker, 'Homeless Hare' takes place on the oft-used setting of the building site but there's nothing hackneyed about these antics. Jones infuses Bugs's heckling with exceptional timing, increasing the hilarity of the gags significantly. "Hercules" the construction worker is a great foil for Bugs and there's also a diminutive assistant who steals every scene he's in with his deadpan performance. While Jones will always be best remembered for his more inventive shorts, he always also had a knack for infusing the traditional heckling and chase cartoons with a new energy and inventiveness. 'Homeless Hare' is an excellent example of this. Jones takes what could have been very standard fare in the hands of another director and manages to fashion a mini-classic.

If we've seen enough Bugs Bunny cartoons, we should know that he doesn't let anyone walk all over him and get away with it. This is truly the case in "Homeless Hare", as a brutish developer digs up Bugs's rabbit hole to make room for a building. The rest of the cartoon pretty much consists of Bugs coming up with ways to punish the developer. Probably the best part is the whole sequence that looks as if it was designed by Rube Goldberg, namely because you think that one thing is going to happen, but something even funnier ends up happening! How did they come up with these things?!Anyway, these cartoons are just plain great. I don't know how we got by without these.As Daffy said in "Stupor Duck": Couldn't they find a better place to put a building?

This is the first of two cartoons where a thoroughly obnoxious and unlikable construction worker tramples on our stalwart hero, with generally hilarious results (though the construction worker was probably less than happy about it all). The second of the two, No Parking Hare, is slightly better, but both are marvelous and are well worth watching. This one is happily available. Recommended.