Tortoise Wins by a Hare (1943)**** (out of 4) Semi-sequel to TORTOISE BEATS HARE has Bugs Bunny asking Cecil Turtle for a rematch since the rabbit can't stand losing the race. Bugs tries to gain an advantage but have no fear because Cecil has a few tricks up his own sleeve. This is another very enjoyable film that manages to be as fun as the original. I enjoyed both of the shorts but think I prefer this one a little more because of the supporting characters, which include a bunch of rabbit gangsters who show up to make sure Bugs wins. The uncut ending, available on the Warner DVD, is a bit over the top and we probably didn't need it but it doesn't take away from any of the laughs in the film.

When I was a kid, I watched a lot of Bugs Bunny cartoons on television. And he usually won in those. But in the shorts he made with Cecil Turtle, he lost both races in them and I remember being a little annoyed when that happened since I was always used to him as a winner even though the Aesop stories they were based on always had the Tortoise winning. Now, though, I can appreciate the way Bugs loses here since he's so arrogant and so blind-sided he sorta deserves his comeuppance here. And what a comeuppance it is since he dresses up like Cecil with an engine shell while Cecil dresses as a rabbit! Guess which one the rabbit gangsters try to keep from winning! Anyway, with Bob Clameptt at the helm, I highly recommended Tortoise Wins by a Hare.

Directed by Bob Clampett, "Tortoise Wins by a Hare" is a sequel to the Tex Avery cartoon "Tortoise Beats Hare" (1941), using some stock footage from that short as well. Bugs Bunny once again tries to match wits with Cecil Turtle in a race, and once again Bugs loses. He constructs a steel shell for an "airflow chassis," and he tucks his ears inside of a bathing cap to prevent any wind resistance. Problem is, he resembles a turtle in his getup, and Cecil accordingly disguises himself as a rabbit. The rabbit mob subsequently mistakes Bugs for Cecil, so all the gangsters erroneously inflict all kinds of torture on Bugs to prevent him from winning the race.Some of the better gags from "Tortoise Wins by a Hare" include the following: In order to find out Cecil's secret to winning a race, Bugs disguises himself as an old man with a phony beard, underneath which he conceals a typewriter as he chats with the turtle. Upon Cecil's entrance to the starting line, all of his other turtle friends carry him and very badly sing "He Did It Before and He Can Do It Again." And Bugs opens the short by overreacting in his own amusing way to the film of his losing the last race with Cecil.One final observation: I really feel that the one gag that kills this cartoon is the very ending, in which all the rabbit mobsters blow their brains out upon realizing their mistake. In my opinion, this gag is quite unnecessary and tasteless, and it's no wonder that certain television stations have cut the gag out of their prints.

Hilarious triple inversion not only of the original fable, but the previous Looney Tunes lampoons, this effort is a little more grounded than such Clampett monuments as "The Great Piggy Bank Robbery" and "The Big Snooze." As a result, it shows how the director, restrained from throwing out all the surrealistic stops, could channel his energy into a dizzyingly twisty plot.Above and beyond that, this cartoon is worth tracking down for Mel Blanc's masterful and startlingly moving voice performance. From Bugs' near-hysterical outburst as he realizes he's winning to his heartbreaking chastisement of his so-called supporters ("You FOOLS! You FOOLS! I'm the RABBIT!"), this cartoon, all on its own, demonstrates that Blanc's talent reached far deeper than a mere capacity for silly voices.