This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Looney Tunes version of Christopher Columbus' voyage to America with Bugs Bunny along for the ride. It's not great, folks. Mel Blanc voices Columbus with this Mario Bros. accent while turning King Ferdinand into a Mexican from the Speedy Gonzales cartoons, for some reason. Stereotyped accents don't bother me usually but here they're just distracting (and in Ferdinand's case just wrong). Queen Isabella is made to sound like Mae West or something, which is amusing at least. It's not a funny short with no memorable gags and most of the humor relying on the "that's-a spicy meatball-a" stuff from Columbus and his crew. At one point they resort to puns for laughs with a "captain's mess" joke that's just groan-worthy. On the plus side Carl Stalling's music is nice and the animation is lovely, with well-drawn characters and backgrounds and great colors. It's a pretty weak effort for the classic era, when Bugs had few misfires.

" . . . May have to cook mascot," reads Christopher Columbus' ship's log for Oct. 11, 1492, in the animated Docudrama, HARE WE GO. In this historical reenactment, Bugs Bunny plays the mascot. Mr. Columbus' mutinous crew already has suggested cutting off Bugs' ears (to what purpose is unclear). When push comes to shove, two of CC's three ships high-tail it back to Europe. Chris seems seriously tempted to fix rabbit stew (as he hasn't packed enough ship's rats to last a voyage this long). But before Bugs gets his goose cooked (this seems like some form of incipient cannibalism), their Unhelmed ship miraculously makes landfall near Plymouth Rock. This documentary short explains a lot about why Americans are prone to carry "lucky" rabbit's feet on their key chains even today. Without Bugs' heroics on this voyage, many of us could be speaking gibberish right now in various foreign countries. How does that Mohican saying go? Thanks a lot, Bugs!

Obviously, "Hare We Go" is promoting the myth of Christopher Columbus's life. In reality, it's unclear whether or not Columbus was really Italian (he may have been a Spanish Jew who converted to Christianity during the Inquisition); by the time that he set sail, most people on both sides of the Atlantic had already figured out that the Earth is round (Washington Irving made up the story about him proving it round); the story about the crew trying to mutiny mostly seems to be making those at the top look good - an attack on the working class, if you will; and Columbus couldn't have discovered America if there were already people there (never mind that he initiated 500 years of genocide against the Indians). "Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong" tells the whole story.Oh well, other than that, it's great to see Bugs Bunny's gags, as he accompanies Columbus as mascot on the trip across the ocean, and then discovers America. Another classic cartoon.

The debate."Round!" - "Flat." - "Round!" - "Flat." - "Round." - "Flat.""She's a round, she's a firm, she's a fully packed! She's'a round like my head!" BAM! "She's flat like your head." The queen. "Oh, boys. C'm'ere. If you can prove the world is round, . . . " "Prove. Always'a prove." The voyage. Bugs is the mascot. He sings and plays the guitar.We learn about the Captain's Mess. Let him clean it up! The crew mutinies. A knife is thrown! "Who's a the wise guy?"One final bit of madness on Chris's part with his seeing Bugs as a nice roast chicken running around the deck, and America is discovered.Bugs takes the credit."Bugs'a Bunny. Who discovered America?" This one spoke for itself. No review of superlatives could emphasize it any better.I thought it was an Oscar winner, but apparently it wasn't even nominated.Still, it was a grand chapter in the saga of Bugs Bunny and the Warner Bros. cartoons.