Porky and Daffy are our unlikely heroes and Earth’s only hope when facing the threat of alien invasion. In this buddy-comedy of epic proportions, they race to save the world, delivering all the laugh-out-loud gags and vibrant visuals that have made the Looney Tunes so iconic, but on a scope & scale yet to be experienced.
- Based on Looney Tunes Cartoons (TV).
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When I first heard that The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie was coming to theaters, I was a bit surprised. After all, Looney Tuness had never made a feature-length movie before – unless you count the live-action/animated hybrids of Looney Tunes: Back in Action, Space Jam and Space Jam: A New Legacy. And with that sequel doing rather badly (winning a few Golden Raspberry Awards), it had seemed like Warner Bros. was out of the Looney Tunes movie biz. Apparently not. So would viewers be pleasantly surprised by this fully animated feature? Or would this Bunny-free production be a last sad gasp from this classic cartoon group?
Daffy Duck and Porky Pig are memorable characters of the Looney Tunes squad that so many grew up with. While they aren’t as popular as “What’s Up, Doc” himself, Bugs Bunny, they are still memorable figures from childhood. Now, they are leading their own film in The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie. While they are still as zany as ever, they don’t seem quite as comical as they used to. Maybe it’s the new voice (Eric Bauza voices both instead of the late Mel Blanc). They do sound very similar, but the timing just feels off.
The storyline is pretty simple, and seems taken straight from one of the old cartoons, and it’s all kinds of disappointing. A lot of new characters are introduced… and then nothing is really done to get the viewers interested in them. The story seems to drag along, since there are loads of nonsensical sequences that are obviously just time-fillers in order to stretch out the length of this show. And then, after pretty much ripping off Invasion of the Body Snatchers for a while, it suddenly does an about-face and throws in an Armageddon parody as well. With so many writers attached to this, viewers should expect better than this.
And then there’s the violence. While most of it is typical of cartoons – characters getting bashed in the head, exploding, etc. then emerging without any lasting effects – there is a sequence that goes beyond that. Daffy, who has already shown his version of berserker fury several times – spends a whole sequence hitting himself… even going so far as to slam his head in a car door (which has just mysteriously appeared) over and over. With kids going through so much self-abuse issues these days – cutting and hurting themselves – Sure, that may be reading too much into things, but it’s kind of indicative of the film as a whole. It may be brand new, but it feels very dated and out of touch..
Obviously just a regular cartoon that’s been stretched into a feature-length film, The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie is a sad attempt to make Looney Tunes relevant once again. It seems like this classic group from everyone’s childhood is running out of steam. Oddly enough, this last gasp doesn’t even showcase some of their other popular characters. Bugs Bunny doesn’t make a cameo. Neither does Marvin the Martian, who easily could have been the alien of the pic. Nobody but Porky, Daffy and Petunia show up. That’s just a missed opportunity. Little kids may like the inane “comedy” antics, but the rest of us should be giving this mess a hard pass.
