Cartoon Network/Warner Home Video's The Looney Tunes Show Season One Volume Two DVD adds up to a whole mess o' meh. 1.5/5.

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Warner Bros. Looney Tunes shorts were classics for very good reason: they mixed brilliant gags with limitless imagination and a willingness to violate the rules at every turn.

It's a mix the producers of The Looney Tunes Show just can't get right: by dumping these immortal characters in a sitcom-style situation, it simply cheapens one of Warner Bros.' greatest animation assets.

Warner Home Video Presents The Looney Tunes Show Season One Volume Two DVD

Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck (both voiced by Jeff Bergman) live together in a suburban bungalow, surrounded by their neighbors: Porky Pig (Bob Bergen), Speedy Gonzales (Fred Armisen), Taz (Jim Cummings) and other members of The Looney Tunes gang. Most of the shorts revolve around Daffy's continued attempts to try (and fail) to one-up Bugs, whether it's teaching Gossamer the Monster (Kwesi Boakye) how to get by in school or wooing Hollywood actress Starlett Johansson at a tropical resort.

As an add-on, you get further installments of the feud between Roadrunner and Wile. E. Coyote, this time rendered in CGI.

First, the positives: the character designs are solid. They characters look leaner than in the original shorts and their eyes and teeth take up a greater proportion of their faces but they're familiar enough that older fans won't complain. The voice cast does a great job as well; okay, it's not Mel Blanc but who is?

Unfortunately, that's where the party ends. Leaving aside the strange decision to turn Witch Hazel into Witch Lezah and giving her an African-American voice, the show's characters are watered down to accommodate the sitcom format. This means that Daffy actually has some friends . . . and a girlfriend! As for Bugs, he always wins every scrap (okay, he won most of the time in the cartoons as well, but he got battered a few times too).

It's not just that the sitcom format means watering down the characters, the writers don't even acknowledge the show's history. For instance, the episode "Casa de Calma" wastes a beautiful opportunity to drop Bug's classic line, "I knew I shoulda taken that left turn at Albuquerque!"

As for the jokes that do get through: it speaks volumes that the much-criticized Tiny Toons produced more laughs per minute than The Looney Tunes Show. That's not to say this show doesn't have the occasional giggle, but they're few and far between.

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Don't Waste Your Time on The Looney Tunes Show Season One Volume Two DVD

If you've ever fallen over laughing at one of Chuck Jones , Friz Freleng or Tex Avery's classic shorts, you'll only find The Looney Tunes Show a bitter disappointment. While it has a few (mostly cheap) laughs, it doesn't capture the magic that made the original shorts such classics. It gets a 1.5/5.