. . . was most notable for its warning to American men NOT to fall for double-dealing, duplicitous, back-stabbing, false, two-timing, fickle, untrue, flighty foreign chicks. By and large, CASABLANCA was successful in its Messaging, as the French-accented Jackie Kennedy was the closest brush that Americans had from 1942 until this past Friday with the Terrifying Prospect of having a Foreign First Lady NOT fully vetted by anyone given the run of Our People's White House. However, by 1995 Doonesbury Comic Strip Artist Gary Trudeau had publicized National Buffoon Donald J. Rump's "Run for the Presidency" so widely that Warner Bros. felt it incumbent to bring their Looney Tunes Animated Shorts Seers division out of mothballs to remake their iconic World War Two feature as a brief cartoon warning America even more explicitly of Rump's Loose Cannon Proclivities. Casting Penelope Pussywillow as Femme Fatale Ilsa ("Kitty" here, or the future Melancholia Rump, in Real Life) and Bugs Bunny as CARROTBLANCA's failing casino owner Rick (this is Bugs' ONLY portrayal of Rump himself, a sorry task usually relegated to Porky Pig, Daffy Duck, Pepe LePew, Foghorn Leghorn, Tweety Bird, Taz, Bosko, Buddy, Egghead, or Yosemite Sam) Warner warns that if Ilsa bails out on Victor (Sylvester Cat here) in favor of Rick, then Putin will gain America's nuclear access codes from Melancholia. A word to the wise: Better stock up ASAP on those Haz-Mat anti-radiation protective suits (like the home invaders wear in E.T.) for EACH member of you family!

I really don't care for many of the Looney Tunes cartoons made after the classic era and even less for those made from the '90s on. This is one of the more well-regarded and I can't for the life of me see why. It's a parody of Casablanca that tries to shoehorn in every character they can, even if they're only in it briefly. So it was seemingly targeted at an older audience that not only had seen a lot of Looney Tunes but had seen Casablanca, as well. Obviously you don't have to be older to know Casablanca but, let's be real, there aren't a lot of kids who have seen it or would even want to. That was as true in 1995 as it is today. The animation is showy but hollow. The voice work is the usual weak Blanc mimicry the later Looney Tunes have. The biggest problem with it is that it's just not funny. I didn't laugh once when I first saw it twenty years ago and, seeing it again today, I'm still not laughing. I love Looney Tunes and I love Casablanca. I appreciate that the effort behind this was sincere but I'm not really going to bump its rating up because of that. I just don't like it and I don't really understand why the heck they made it.

In Casablanca, Bugs Bunny runs an American bar and only looks out for himself. When he is given secret papers that will help defeat the rule of General Pandemonium. However when Bugs falls for Kitty, the wife of the leader of resistance, things change for him and he finds himself having to put himself on the line.I have nothing against the updated Loony Tunes cartoons, but I do have something against cartoons that are unfunny, poorly developed and simply weak. Here the idea of a spoof on the film Casablanca sounds like it could be OK but it is a terrible, horrid mess. The plot copies the plot of Casablanca in a very condensed form but does nothing of merit with it. With so many little details to add in, the plot never stops long enough to be funny.This is made worse by the sheer volume of characters crammed in with nothing to do. Only Tweety's impression of Peter Lorre is funny - but even that had been done better by a Loony Tunes character that used to be Lorre. None of the rest of the characters really work - their voice work is poor at best, horrid at worst. They rush past the screen with so little time that they never make an impression - it's like the film is expecting the recognition of characters to be enough to replace laughs or fun.With barely a single laugh to it, a plot that is an uninspired mess and characters who don't sound like themselves or act like themselves this cartoon is about a bad a film from Loony Tunes as I have seen. It's not the fact that it is a modern cartoon that bothers me - it's the fact that it is a sh*t cartoon. Avoid this like the plague.

In an inspired decision, this cartoon was included on the new two-disc special edition of Casablance that was released in August 2003. It's worth more than just one look as many of your old favorites - Bugs, Daffy, Yosemite Sam, Foghorn Leghorn and others - stop by for cameos or larger roles. I thought the best casting was Pepe LePew in the Claude Rains role, though Tweety's Peter Lorre impression is priceless. (These are two characters, incidentally, whom I usually have little use for.) A very worthy successor to the great Warner Bros. cartoons of the 40s and 50s, and a great homage to one of the greatest movies ever made.