'Little Man' stolen from a Bugs Bunny cartoon?

Posted Tuesday, July 18, 2006 at 10:28 AM Central

by Tim Briscoe

It's usually a good thing when the internet's movie blogs discuss your new film. Except when they are ponder if your movie is a rip-off of an old Bugs Bunny cartoon.

That's exactly what is happening with the Wayans Brothers latest, Little Man. Internet posters claim that the film's plot is plagiarized from a 1954 Looney Tunes cartoon titled "Baby Buggy Bunny."

The short -- surely you've seen it if you've watched Bugs Bunny cartoons for any length of time before -- involves a diminutive criminal who poses as a baby to return some valuables that have mistakenly fallen into the hands of his adoptive parents. (It can be found on the Looney Tunes Golden Collection Vol. 2 DVD.)

The animation blog Cartoon Brew even cites specific scenes within Little Man which seem to have been lifted from the old short. They include the new parents discovering a military tattoo on the baby and a suspecting adult playing "upsy daisy" with the tyke against the ceiling. Apparently these inclusions (or are they simply an homage?) contain no credit or reference to the original work, namely director Chuck Jones and writer Michael Maltese.

Even with such a tribute to a comedy classic, Little Man isn't getting much critical love. Despite opening at number two at the box office this past weekend with $21.6 million, the movie is the quickest in history to hit IMDb's bottom 100 list.

According to film site /FILM, the film has received over 900 votes giving it a 2.1 rating on the Internet Movie Database's scale from one to 10. That puts it up there (rather, down there) with the likes of .com for Murder, Phat Girlz, Troll 2, and From Justin to Kelly.

Similarly, the score for Little Man on MetaCritic, a site which measures the consensus of well-respected critics, is a paltry 30 out of 100.