The Great Carrot-Train Robbery
The Great Carrot-Train Robbery
| 24 January 1969 (USA)
The Great Carrot-Train Robbery Trailers

Bunny and Claude are still at their carrot caper. This time, they rob a train as the Sheriff is once again called out to stop them..

Reviews
Edgar Allan Pooh

. . . begins by recycling the lame title ballad from the earlier animated short. The cigar-chomping Bunny Parker has one foot in the grave, judging by her habitually pained expression. No doubt she has some Stogie-induced form of oral cancer, precluding her from eating any of the pointy orange vegetables she and partner Claude filch. Yet Bunny continues to egg on Mr. Barrow to illegally appropriate ever greater quantities of the nutritious root, leading to the GREAT CARROT-TRAIN ROBBERY. Big screen railroad heists have fascinated Americans since the 1890s, since they often involve high-speed fights fought atop box car catwalks. CARROT-TRAIN is no exception, and the pursuing sheriff is in for more exercise here (with less shooting) than he experienced in episode one of BUNNY AND CLAUDE. Still, Warner Bros.' animation of the 1960s is a pale imitation of their work from 20 years earlier, and it's only gone further downhill since Richard III hunched his way out of the White House. I don't recall Bunny doing anything recently, so I assume she's long gone (done in by her nicotine addiction). Fortunately, Claude now has the right to marry if he hits it off with Bugs--even in every county of Kentucky!

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TheLittleSongbird

Like Bunny and Claude beforehand, The Great Carrot-Train Robbery was decent. It is far from the best Merrie Melodies cartoon, but there have been a lot worse. This isn't as efficiently paced as its predecessor, though it is fast and furious it's just that Bunny and Claude was delivered at pretty much breakneck speed.The animation isn't amazing, but it is of okay quality and I did love its wacky style. Bill Lava's music is as energetic as before, if not quite as driven or as fresh with the alternating of the 60s organ-guitar groove and banjo idea. But I still loved the main theme, which is rootin' tootin' catchy.The dialogue is nice and droll, witty and fresh maybe not, but acceptable. I loved the sight gags, the closing gag especially cracks me up, and the sound effects are fun. Bunny and Claude are as sly and likable as ever, and the Sheriff is deliciously incompetent. And once again, Mel Blanc and Pat Woodell's voice work is top notch.So overall, a decent cartoon, never reaching masterpiece status but it is not an abomination either. 7/10 Bethany Cox

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slipjig

It saddens me to know that someone like Robert McKimson, after decades of directing some brilliant work for Warner Brothers, had by 1969 been reduced to making fourth-rate imitations of sixth-rate Hanna-Barbera TV dreck. Bunny and Claude, apparently, were an attempt to create a new franchise for WB Animation (a good idea, since shorts from that period starring Porky, Daffy, etc. had pretty much lost sight of who those characters were). They did their best, even attempting to inject a little of the spirit of the actual "Bonnie and Clyde" into the mix; I'm thinking of Bunny reclining on a pile of carrots in a boxcar and simpering, "Come here, Claude," in what is the closest to a seduction scene as you'll ever see in a WB cartoon.There are two problems, however. The first is that the animation is depressingly cheap. This I can forgive, since budgets for theatrical animated shorts were drying up very quickly. The second I cannot forgive: it's not funny. Not even in passing. Not even a titter's-worth. I absolutely cannot reconcile in my head the fact that the same studio produced such phenomenal works as "Duck Amuck" and "What's Opera, Doc" only 15 years earlier. Just goes to show you that you can never go home again. Sigh...My rating: 1 out of a possible 10.

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dootuss

This was the 2nd cartoon short that is based on the Bunny and Claude cartoons (apparently, this was also the last one ever made), and like the first one, it's pretty good. It's funny, and loaded with the usual humor that cartoons way back when had, which of course now are cliches. Like the other cartoon, it has campy music, which isn't a good thing. Frankly, despite this was the last Bunny and Claude short ever made, it's still pretty good. 9/10.

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