New ‘Looney Tunes’ Movie Entertains At A Hundred Miles Per Minute
Image: Still from 'The Day The Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie'. Source: Pinnacle Films
Did you know that a straight Looney Tunes movie has never been released in theatres before? Sure, there have been hybrid films like Back in Action or the culturally bankrupt Space Jam films, but Peter Browngardt’s The Day The Earth Blew Up is the first time a straightforward Looney Tunes movie has been released in cinemas.
Watching this film that is definitionally making history, it’s hard to fathom why. With a modest budget but charm in spades, The Day The Earth Blew Up really does feel like a feature-length Looney Tunes extravaganza. Taking loving cues for its premise from 50s sci-fi B-movies, it puts Daffy Duck and Porky Pig (both voiced by Eric Bauza) in a number of increasingly insane situations to amusing effect.
After their father figure Farmer Jim (Fred Tatasciore) seemingly ascends to heaven, Daffy and Porky are living alone when a UFO takes a huge chunk out of their roof. They only have a short amount of time to fix it before their house is foreclosed, and so they get to work at the gum factory with flavour scientist Petunia (Candi Milo). But when the pair discover a conspiracy regarding the gum, it kicks off a crazy adventure as only a Looney Tunes cartoon could envision.
It’s uncanny how much The Day The Earth Blew Up feels like a blast from the past. Apart from some glaringly modern references, the film feels like a classic Looney Tunes caper with gags both visual and written. The excellent animation in particular bolsters this feeling, choosing to utilise hand drawn animation and matte backgrounds in what feels like an increasingly lost art.
Looney Tunes brought into the present
Being a feature length Looney Tunes film, it’s no shock that The Day The Earth Blew Up moves at a hundred miles a minute. Jokes constantly spill out of this movie while still managing to tell a fairly cohesive story, even if the gags don’t have a 100% hit rate. The comedy does border on overbearing at times and there are very few moments of downtime, which I felt most strongly in stretches of the film where the jokes weren’t hitting as hard for me.
But as mentioned, the narrative is a surprisingly solid anchor. Telling a reimagined version of Daffy and Porky’s childhoods as quasi-brothers, The Day The Earth Blew Up has a surprisingly solid emotional arc for these beloved characters that’s bolstered with an incredible dual performance by Eric Bauza. It’s hardly reinventing the wheel, but it would’ve been much simpler to have 80 minutes of these two characters getting up to hijinks; the fact there was this much effort put in is much appreciated.
As such, it’s pretty easy to enjoy The Day The Earth Blew Up. It doesn’t fire on all cylinders all the time, but its charming animation and solid character work make it a fine entry in the Looney Tunes canon, and is surely best seen in cinemas for the most historically significant experience.
★★★
The Day The Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie is in cinemas from March 27th.
