MFT: Looney Tunes: Back In Action Louevre Scene

This is a scene from a 2003 live-action / animated hybrid feature film "Looney Toones: Back In Action" directed by Joe Dante. In it you can see the antagonist Elmer Fudd and the protagonists Buggs Bunny and Duffy Duck messing around in the Louevre museum trying to one up each other in the classic Looney Toons "in you face" cerebral surreal mayhem. They are running around the hallways, jumping from one painting to another, taunting the aggressor and otherwise passing time in a creatively fulfilling fashion. It is a fine showcase of what Looney Toones is about in a nutshell.

I'm going to retell the episode because it is one of those things that are really fun to write out.

The story goes - the band is ambushed by one and only Elmer Fudd. However, Buggs Bunny is no slouch and he starts to talk to Fudd. He starts a dispute regarding the nature of good and evil. That makes Fudd to hesitate for a moment, but he momentarily snaps back and threatens to finish them off. But Bunny starts to play a guessing game with playing cards to distract Fudd. He makes a series of incorrect guesses while Fudd tries to explain which card he meant. By the end of the routine, Fudd is all covered in playing cards like a sticky ribbon with flies near the rotten meat. 

In the meantime - the dynamic duo escapes through the hallways of Louevre. They jump into Salvador Dali's Persistence of Time. Fudd follows, tries to shoot, but his gun melts just like the clocks. Buggs and Duffy run away. At first it seems like a simple change of scenery. But the environment of the painting affects the characters. As they escape, time cathes up with them and starts to drag. Fudd yells at them and the words he spits out turn into an abstract rebus floating in the sky. He tries to shoot again, but melts into a nondescript blob similar to one from "I have no mouth but I must scream" (really).

After that - the boys go through the wall like Freddy K. straight into Edward Munch "Scream". They run from deep background right into the foreground stumbling into the protagonist causing him to scream. Fudd follows and so Buggs stomps on his foot and Fudd makes his own 'scream' impresssion, while the dynamic duo escapes. 

The next stop is Toulouse-Lautrec Moulin Rouge poster. Fudd gets really awkward in this kind of environment. He is approached by two ladies who turn out to be crossdressing Buggs and Duffy. They proceed to kick him around a bit until the pace switches into overdrive and they just start to jump around from painting to painting as if it was musical chairs thing. 

Finally, they go into Georges Seurat's A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte - the pointilist painting. Fudd enters his huntere mode and looks through the passerbys. He stops by disguised Duffy and finds Buggs who pretends to be a toddler. Fudd doesn't get the ruse and tries to play with the toddler until he realizes the trick and continues the chase. He tries to shoot two but they manage to slip away. Fudd leaves splashes of erasure on the canvas.

Duffy and Buggs manage to jump out of the painting to the hallway. Fudd follows. But before he can readapt from the painting, Buggs approaches him and reads him an explanation of the concept of pointilism. Fudd realizes he is in trouble. At the same time, Buggs gets his portable fan, turns it on and disintegrates Fudd as if he was just a hoard of dust. In the meantime - Duffy tries to reconstruct himself by connecting the dots. 

Outside context - this scene is a fine showcase of the Looney Toones freewheeling, anything goes mentality. It is very lettrist-situationist in its approach to already existing material. Joe Dante uses it for the purposes of slapstick gags and at the same time he manages to make a distinct homages to the source style and string together a cohesive surreal narrative building upon the existing blocks.