While not among my favourite Looney Tunes cartoons, although it stars one of my favourite cartoon characters ever, 'Jack-Wabbit and the Beanstalk' is very well done and very entertaining.
As ever with Looney Tunes, although an early Bugs Bunny cartoon meaning that Bugs' design was still evolving, the animation is very good to great. It's beautifully drawn, everything moves smoothly with no stiffness, the backgrounds are rich in colour and detail and it's sumptuous and vibrant in colour.
Carl Stalling's music score is outstanding, then again there may be some bias as Stalling is my personal favourite of the Looney Tunes composers. The music is supremely characterful and energetic, the orchestration is lush and clever and most importantly aside from that it's very memorable it fits with to the action and adds to it, Stalling also showing his perhaps unmatched ability at that time to enhance the action.
The humour here, as has been said already, is mostly verbal rather than visual and kinetic. The script is incredibly funny and razor sharp in its wit, and there are some fun bits in the animation as well. The closing sequence is indeed terrific. The narration never falls into the trap of being over-explanatory or trying to tell too much. The story is somewhat formulaic, but the humour, crisp pacing and Bugs' charisma more than compensates.
Bugs is such a funny and charismatic leading character, and he doesn't disappoint here even relatively early on in his development. The giant is not as strong a character and the least strong thing about 'Jack-Wabbit and the Beanstalk', he's sometimes amusing and threatening, especially in one of the gags referencing World War 2 and the Nazis, but also a bit bland and rather too dumb, even for a character meant to be. His rapport with Bugs has its nice amusing moments but is not as inspired as it could have been and there could have been more tension perhaps. Mel Blanc does fantastically voicing both characters and the narrator, yet another cartoon that demonstrates his unparalleled ability to voice more than one character and make them completely different but distinctive.
In conclusion, very well done and well worth watching. Just could have been even better if Bugs' foil was as well written as Bugs. 8/10 Bethany Cox
