YMMV / The Adventures of the American Rabbit

• Adaptation Displacement: Many people may not know about the original book^note Originally titled "The Legend of the American Rabbit" by artist Stewart Moskowitz which was first published three years earlier. On the other hand, other than allowing the use of his characters, he wasn't directly involved in the making of the movie.
• Anvilicious: About everything from honesty to sportsmanship to proper piano technique.
• Anti-Climax Boss: The final duel between Rob and the main villain is ridiculous and uninteresting. It starts with him kidnapping the moose child at the dam and leaving him on a rock in the middle of ankle-deep water close to the heroes and ends with Vultor losing control of his flight in a snowstorm.
• Ass Pull: Everywhere. From the Legacy to the lightning powers to the world domination scheme involving chocolate. It's all there.
• Awesome Music: The music for this was done by Howard Kaylan and Mark Volman, AKA Flo (Volman) and Eddie (Kaylan), of The Turtles, The Mothers Of Invention and Down and Dirty Duck fame.
• Broken Aesop: The film suffers from this big time. The Big Bad's henchmen are a biker gang called The Jackals, who are... jackals. Several times throughout, characters address that no one should assume all jackals are evil just because of the actions of a few bad apples. All well and good, except that there are no good jackals in the movie — every one we see is a member of the biker gang and working for the main villain.
• Designated Hero: Rob constantly misses opportunities to stop the Jackals throughout the movie, and only directly stops about two of them by the time the movie's over.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Ping, the Garfield-voiced gorilla. Supposedly, besides attempting to make money to rebuild a bar, the characters traveling with Rob believe that they have a "duty to fight against evil," but out of all of them, Ping is the only one who actually does anything against the Jackal antagonists. In fact, he's probably more effective than Rob is, American Rabbit or not.
• Ham and Cheese: Kenneth Mars deserves credit for taking this route as the Big Bad Walt; his performance is the only thing everyone remotely enjoys about this movie.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The penguins in New York City bear a surprising resemblance to those of Club Penguin. Though this movie came out way before Club Penguin was a thing.
  • During the ending, one of the hares and later, Rob, mentions the titular rabbit is doing a barrel roll. It wouldn't be until a decade later that another hare would mention the now memetic "Do A Barrel Roll!" line.
• Strangled by the Red String: Rob and Bunny hook up at the end, mostly because he's the hero and she's the only girl.
• Suspiciously Similar Song:
  • The main theme to the movie is this to John Williams's Superman theme.
  • The Jackals' theme sounds very similar to Foghat's "Slow Ride".
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • In the movie, it is mentioned that not all jackals are bad. However, every jackal seen in the movie is a villain. They could have had Vultor decide that the jackals were no longer useful to him and leaving them to die on the burning boat in New Orleans. Robert could have saved them, leading to a Heel–Face Turn.
  • The whole situation regarding the generational Legacy. Where did it come from? What purpose does it serve, especially since it appears to give Rob's home village some kind of special protection from the outside world? Is it exclusive to Rob's family? Did he inherit it from one of his parents? Does the Legacy just randomly pick a new baby being born to bestow its powers?
  • The movie could be seen as They Condensed a Perfectly Good Plot. If this were a 65-Episode Cartoon or similar series, there would be more than enough time for proper Worldbuilding and Character Development, and for each major setpiece to warrant a full episode, among other things. As it is, it plays more as a Random Events Plot where things just happen in quick succession.
• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?:
  • The film tends to zigzag this with its violence, but the surprising amount of talk about morals and taking political action (such as nonviolent protest) would probably bore and/or confuse kids.
  • The film also completely averts Frothy Mugs of Water with beer being shown front and center in several shots. One character that the Jackals encounter even being a drunkard in an alleyway.

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