Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Academy Awards Animation Collection - 15 Winners and 26 Nominees

by Madison Carter

A long-winded title, this set contains the best of the best from Warners, MGM and Fleischer.

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Up until now, if you wanted classic cartoons from a specific series, you had to get a set that focused entirely on that series. If you liked Daffy Duck, you had to get the Looney Tunes sets; if you were more of a Popeye fan, then his set was the way to go. However, Warner Brothers has finally caught on to the fact that not only do they possess their own incredible library of animated shorts, but most of MGM’s and others. Thus, we see the first truly across-the-board representation of some of animation’s finest in Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Academy Awards Animation Collection (how’s that for a title?).

This set collects 15 Oscar winners and 26 more nominees from every series Warners has access to now: The Looney Tunes, Tom & Jerry, Droopy, Popeye, the Fleischer Superman. While the winners side is heavily in favor of MGM’s Tom & Jerry, including nominees is a good way to get more representation. And while many of these shorts are already included on sets more specific to their nature, some show up on DVD here for the first time. The most notable may be A Wild Hare, the first film to truly introduce Bugs Bunny. We get Pepe LePew, Speedy Gonzalez and even Chuck Jones’ classic-but-odd film The Dot and the Line.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that while it’s a great set, and some of the restored cartoons look great, it’s obvious Warners didn’t take quite as much care with this set as they normally do. Interlacing issues will affect those with more sensitive players, and a couple of the Tom & Jerry cartoons look grainy as hell.

There are numerous commentary and isolated music score tracks to be found across the three discs, and it’s great to see that they’re not just repeats of previously-released versions. An hour-long documentary about the history of Oscar-nominated shorts is really intriguing, and several people involved don’t bother to hide the fact that MGM won so many Oscars in this field because they all-but-rigged the voting. Oh, and props to Disney for allowing footage from some early Mickey shorts to be shown in the documentary.

The WB Academy Awards Animation Collection has a lot of double-dipping for fans who have already started collecting other sets, but those who just want a good smattering of different cartoon series and styles will enjoy the set. There’s also a one-disc version featuring just the fifteen winners, but if you have to go, go all the way, right?