Studio: Walt Disney Productions
Distributor: United Artists
Produced by: Walt Disney
Short Synopsis
Max Hare, cocky, athletic and the crowd's favourite, faces Toby Tortoise in a race. Toby is slow and clumsy and gets laughed at, though he has a useful ability to stretch his neck and legs. Max promises to play fair, but clearly just wants to humiliate him. At the gun, Max shoots off so fast that he is gone before his own dust settles. He is so far ahead that he stops to show off: he pretends to nap under a tree to watch Toby crawl by, then streaks past him again. Further down the road he passes a girls' school and stops to flirt with the bunny girls, showing off his tennis and archery, so fast that he shoots an arrow and catches it himself. Toby plods past; the girls invite him to stop too, but he politely declines. Max hears the crowd cheering and realises Toby is nearly at the finish. He kisses the girls goodbye and races off, Toby stretches his legs and neck for a final burst, and Toby wins by a neck. The crowd carries him off in triumph.
Why It Matters
- Max Hare's speed is the joke and the technique. The Disney animators used smears, speed lines and impossible timing, a rabbit fast enough to catch his own arrow, in a way that changed how cartoon speed could be shown.
- It won the Academy Award for Best Cartoon Short Subject. Max Hare, a fast-talking, cocky rabbit who loses to his own overconfidence, is widely seen as one of the inspirations for Bugs Bunny, who arrived at Warner Bros. in 1940.
Notes and Trivia
- Max and Toby returned in Toby Tortoise Returns (1936).
- Toby appears in the final scene of Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988).
- See also: Three Little Pigs (1933), The Flying Mouse (1934).