Stylish but barely mediocre overall

Brilliant and touching

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

Marvin the Martian is surveying the Earth through his telescope when he spots a rocket launch from Cape Canaveral. Sure enough, the rocket's headed his way and on board is Bugs Bunny. When Bugs crash lands, he finds Marvin is none too pleased that an Earth creature has come to "contaminate my atmosphere." This is the last appearance of Marvin the Martian in a classic era Looney Tunes short and it's an enjoyable one, if not particularly great. The gags are okay and the dialogue sometimes amusing. There's a lot of dialogue in this one, too. Good voice work from the incomparable Mel Blanc. The music is a little 'blah' and generic. The animation is nice and colorful. There's something off about the whole thing. I'll put it down to Jones having one foot out of the door, about to leave Warner Bros. The Bugs here is also more reminiscent of later Bugs than classic Bugs, too, which is part of the problem. Still, it's watchable and even fun in spots. Bugs fans should like it fine.

This is a real shame, that this cartoon isn't a classic for while it is entertaining it has too many flaws for me to consider it a classic. While the animation is very well done and detailed, the vocal characterisations of Mel Blanc are top notch and the music is beautiful, what let it down is that it is too talky. It is good that there is dialogue and all that, but there is too much of it. Consequently the jokes don't work as well as it should. Also it may be just me, but I found the dialogue rather hit and miss. There are some good lines like "wait a minute, are you out of your CottonTail mind?" and "because rabbits are expendable that's why" but Marvin is given very little to do because his dialogue isn't that much to go on. Overall, decent but it isn't a favourite of mine unfortunately. 7/10 Bethany Cox

Sent to Mars in place of a human, the expendable Bugs Bunny arrives to find Marvin the alien on Mars and not to happy to have the company and immediately greets him armed to the teeth with space age ray guns.It's been a while since I have seen a Bugs Bunny cartoon with Marvin and this film was welcome to me for that reason. However this film is not very good. The first half of the film seems to be mostly talk - Marvin explaining himself and then Bugs filling in the audience as to why he was put on a rocket by NASA. The problem is that this isn't very funny and it takes up half the time of the film!The rest of the film really only consists of two gags around the use of the ray gun, and these aren't that funny either. Bugs is also not himself - he isn't given the chance to do any real trickery and the punchline betrays his character totally. Marvin is OK and does his `that makes me very angry' line a few times, but he can't carry the short.Overall this cartoon is a shame because it is a missed opportunity - both Bugs and Marvin are funny and have made some good cartoons together; sadly this isn't one of them.

Most of the gags in this are verbal in nature, rather than sight gags (though it has a fair number of those as well) and Marvin may have more of the best lines than Bugs, particularly in the beginning. As is often the case, the title is a play on words-in this case, "mad as a March hare", which I believe was derived from Alice in Wonderland. Marvin's comments on "the flora and fauna of Earth likely would have delighted H. L. Mencken and Ambrose Bierce! The ending scene is beautiful, particularly the closing line. Great fun is had by all (well, not by Marvin, not at the end, anyway). Well worth watching. Most highly recommended.