Edgar Allan Pooh . . . that just because you fall in love with something doesn't make it RIGHT! For instance, Elmer Fudd as the title character here notices that a bulldog is harassing a cat, so he pumps a Love Connection Arrow into the canine's butt. The mutt immediately adopts the accents of Pepe LePew when that skunk is wooing Penelope. However, Rover's feline victim is NOT amused, as she's shown well on her way to shooting herself in the head the nine times necessary to commit cat suicide once and for all. The rest of Elmer\Puck's Forced Matings are equally tragic misfires. Notice that Warner did not title this lesson as BRILLIANT CUPID, or even SILLY CUPID. The Looney Tuners went out on a limb to make an editorial judgment here: Elmer's insistence on trying to pound square pegs into round holes makes him a STUPID CUPID! Warner is preparing America for a day when that DSM Cookbook at Psychology Today is taken over by the Man-Boy Love Connection (an actual group numbering many shrinks among its members). On that day, Americans will realize that they've been totally bamboozled to "grow" toward tolerating, accepting, and abetting a moving target of "inclusion" which finds them dipping a toe into the Lowest Circle of Hell by the 21st Century. Like frogs in a pot brought to a slow boil, we failed to jump out as the water warmed until our goose was cooked! Just don't say that we weren't warned here by Warner's STUPID CUPID.

phantom_tollbooth Frank Tashlin's 'The Stupid Cupid' is a weird cartoon which suffers from some bizarre plotting and the bad miscasting of Elmer Fudd. Elmer plays the role of Cupid, causing animals to fall in love with partners of varying appropriateness. Elmer looks horrible in this cartoon, not just because he's been redesigned as Cupid but because his poses and facial expressions are really awkwardly drawn and animated. Tashlin also makes him really annoying, largely forsaking dialogue for an annoying take on Elmer's famous laugh. The best moments of 'The Stupid Cupid' are the early scenes of different animals falling in love, including a great sequence with a horse, a notoriously difficult creature to animate, something which Tashlin makes look easy. However, when Daffy Duck enters the cartoon, suddenly it takes a downturn and ugly-Elmer is not the only problem any more. Daffy has always been my favourite cartoon character of all time but the plot he is given here is not only weak but squished into a small amount of time since much of the cartoon has already passed. Elmer has Daffy fall in love with an unsuspecting chicken, whom he pursues even more aggressively than Pepe Le Pew! There's a great sequence towards the end where Daffy begs the chicken's rooster boyfriend for mercy but it leads to an abrupt and unsatisfying ending which seems to suggest there was a climactic gag cut out. It's the final nail in the coffin for 'The Stupid Cupid', a bizarre cartoon which has one or two nice moments but is, overall, amongst my least favourite of Tashlin's shorts.

Lee Eisenberg We often see images of Cupid shooting people with arrows and making them fall in love, but what if the people didn't want his arrows? That's the premise of Frank Tashlin's "The Stupid Cupid". In this case, Cupid (played by Elmer Fudd) shoots people with arrows with suction cups...and the subsequent love is more like the sort of relationships that one would expect to see in the 1970s.Anyway, when the little guy prepares to shoot Daffy Duck, Daffy resists and explains how their encounter the previous year led to Daffy's unhappy marriage and excess children (needless to say, Daffy says this at near breakneck speed). Finally, Cupid manages to shoot Daffy, and...well, let's just say that what follows is the sort of stuff that I couldn't have even predicted in a classic Warner Bros. cartoon! I just gotta wonder how much fun they must have had creating this stuff.So, while this may not have been the greatest cartoon that they made, it's certainly a hilarious one. Preceding the main plot line, there's even one of the "now I've seen everything" gags (if you're unfamiliar with these, then you'll understand it once you see the cartoon). Really funny.

Robert Reynolds This is a very funny cartoon, pitting two of the Looney Tunes stars against each other in a somewhat unusual battle of wills. Because I want to discuss some of the details of this short, this is a spoiler warning: The opening shows a very cherubic-looking Elmer Fudd, flitting around and shooting animals with arrows to make them fall in love. All goes well (at least from "Cupid's" perspective) until he comes face to face with Daffy Duck, who launches into a particularly inspired rant about his life before and after his last encounter with the arrow-aiming menace to an orderly society, which he feels ruined a carefree single life. He closes by punctuating his point, using Elmer himself to do so. Obviously, at this point, the gauntlet has been flung down.Elmer shoots Daffy and Daffy starts chasing after a very unsettled hen. Said hen is married, to a large and very disturbed rooster, who pointedly wants to know why Daffy is after HIS wife. Daffy explains to the rooster and his "charming Mrs." that his behavior is the fault of that "stupid Cupid", explains that he's also a family man-complete with a carload of his brood as evidence and generally grovels shamelessly (which is infinitely better than picking up your beak from the floor after a jealous rooster punches you into next Thursday) until the rooster allows that it might just all be an innocent misunderstanding. The rooster lets Daffy go and Daffy goes out gratefully-only to be shot by Elmer again and interpose himself between rooster and hen in the midst of their reconciliation. The visual scene here is marvelous and Daffy is in trouble again! This short is available on the Looney Tunes Golden Collection, Volume 4 and is well worth seeing-and so are all four of the Looney Tunes Golden Collections which have been released thus far. I truly hope that all of the remaining Warner Brothers shorts eventually find a home on future Golden Collections. Recommended.