Let us uncover the apparatus. I wrote a pretty considerable revision of this review. Thought it was pretty good, if I do say so myself. Usually I copy and paste the text before I save it, because occasionally you get kicked right out the review template here, and lose the whole thing. You know what’s coming, don’t you? I think that I actually did save it, but then botched something and lost it all anyway. That is aggravating, isn’t it? Courageously I went right on to the next review, which is good for morale. Not so good for remembering the nature or essence of that remarkable revision though! Now we’ll never know. Is this situation kind of like von Stroheim’s Greed, or The Magnificent Ambersons, or Lola Montès? You’re right. Not like that at all.
Anyway. More Wagner. Good stuff with the gloves. The guy who coughs gets shot, which of course is very Tex Avery-like. Liszt, Bugs says, then looks at us. The hand animation here is really great, right to the knots in his fingers. The disrupting/competing mouse character is fantastic, and very well utilized. Bugs hides his technique from him! Just like Eddie van Halen used to do. The boogie-woogie development is a pretty standard Europe/US, high/low idea. Standard, but in this case quite wonderfully explored and elaborated. There’s a nice escalation of gags that corresponds with the rising drama contained in the music. Bugs looks at that notation paper at the brink of playing the finale, oils his fingers and says a prayer. By the end it’s anything goes—this is nice, capable, happy stuff.