Snow Laughing Matter is a 2020 Looney Tunes Cartoons short directed by Pete Browngardt.
Title[]
The title is a play on the phrase "no laughing matter."
Plot[]
In the bleak winter season when the forest is laden with snow, Bugs Bunny is enjoying a mug of carrot tea in front of a warm fire deep inside his burrow when two heaps of snow douse his fire and bury him, thus spoiling his festive mood.
Bugs then emerges via his homemade elevator to see whatever is the fuss and gets his answer when his head is covered in snow shaped in his likeness and he sees Elmer Fudd shoveling snow from his walkway and singing "I've Been Shoveling the Walkway", so he goes to his house to ask him if he could shovel it somewhere else other than his burrow as it has become extremely cold. Unfortunately, Elmer claims that he is a man who does what he pleases whenever he pleases and is unwilling to budge at all and gets even more irritated when Bugs reminds him to love thy neighbor to the point where he bats an entire heap of snow with his shovel at the bunny's chimney and uses a leaf blower to send him packing and trap him in his burrow, much to the latter's anguish.
He then heads back home to finish his labor, planning on having raspberry tea and rhubarb pie afterward, unaware that Bugs has modeled the snow similarly to a caber tossed it back at his house, giving him a hair made of snow. Bugs gets to work on rebuilding his chimney, but Elmer's shoveling ruins it all. He goes to his house once more to briefly chat with Elmer about his situation before using a bucket of water to freeze his walkway so that he slips flat on his face. Bugs asks Elmer if he's okay, at which point his face breaks like porcelain. To salt the wound, he drops a fridge on Fudd for him to use as an ice pack and returns to his burrow whilst singing Elmer's song sadistically before he is immediately pelted with a snowball by his neighbor.
Bugs kindly asks him to ceasefire, but Elmer continues to pelt in a blind fury until Bugs cannot stand it any longer. To save himself, Bugs disguises himself as Elmer's mother and overbearingly tells him to layer up in the winter climate before suiting him too many coats, scarves, and hats, much to Elmer's surprise. He then gives him a pine tree that poses as a mallet and flings him over to the local funeral bank, turning it into a grave that Elmer cracks open before grabbing a drainpipe to annihilate the rabbit, only to see that his house has already been shoveled by Bugs who is seemingly wishing for their feud to end. He joyfully thanks Bugs for giving in and invites him over to tea before realizing that the snow is actually inside his home, causing both the enormous amount of snow and all of his furniture to come hurling out into the yard until his entire property is covered in a mountain of snow.
Bugs nonchalantly gloats at Fudd's misfortune before the latter uses a snowplow to get vengeance on him, sending Bugs fleeing for his own life and dodging Elmer's attempts to crush him to death, eventually coming to a stop at the edge of a narrow cliff. Seeing the infuriated glee on Elmer's face as he wishes for his demise, Bugs just manages to tiptoe underneath the cliff and get behind the snowplow to fool Elmer into thinking he has successfully murdered him before hearing him scream to his plummeting doom in an explosion below.
To add the final blow, Bugs paints a picture of a tropical beach onto a pair of glasses to fool Elmer into thinking that it's summertime and dresses up in summer clothes to set the mood. To celebrate, Elmer brings out his swimming trunks, smears his sunscreen, and prepares to relax as he believes that he has finally won the day. His victory turns Pyrrhic, however, as the winter season gives him permanent frostbite all over his body and freezes him to death, with Bugs mocking his shortcomings.
Music Cues[]
- "I've Been Working on the Railroad" - adapted lyrics sung by Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd; plays throughout the short.
- Gioachino Rossini - "William Tell Overture (Storm)" - plays when Elmer Fudd's house fills with snow.
- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - "Requiem in D Minor, K.626 - 3a. Sequentia: Dies irae" - plays when Elmer Fudd chases Bugs Bunny with a snowplow.
Availability[]
Streaming[]
Notes[]
- HBO Max initially packaged this as episode 111e, along with "Elf Help", "Yuletide Taz", "Holiday Purrchase", and "Ho Ho Go!". In January 2021, following the release of the second batch of the show, it was repackaged as episode 121e.
- When Elmer crashes into a funeral bank, his gravestone reads "Here Lies Elmer Fudd - Loved by Neighbors (Not Really) - 1940-2020". Elmer's year of birth as mentioned on his gravestone, 1940, is a reference to the year the near-finalized version of the character debuted in "Elmer's Candid Camera".
- This is the second and last Looney Tunes Cartoons short to be storyboarded by Eddie Trigueros.
Gallery[]
