Wild to realize that, until the release of “The Day the Earth Blew Up,” the Looney Tunes characters have never had an entirely original, feature-length movie to themselves. “The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Movie” and other 1970s and ’80s features compiled previously released shorts with linking material. Then there were “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?”-style live action/animation hybrids: “Looney Tunes: Back in Action” (excellent; see it if you haven’t already) and two cynical “Space Jam” movies (which turned the strongest personalities in animation history into the servile sidekicks of basketball players).
This grave injustice has been remedied. While far from being a classic, “The Day the Earth Blew Up” is a charming and often invigorating reimagining of key Looney Tunes characters (Daffy Duck and Porky Pig), with a look and sound that links it to past versions without feeling indebted to them. (Tidbit for Tunesheads: the dominant influence here is director-animator Bob Clampett.) The movie was directed by Pete Browngardt, who was handed the keys to the franchise with the excellent series “Looney Tunes Cartoons” five years ago. Media conglomerate Warner Bros. Discovery, which notoriously killed “Coyote vs. Acme,” dumped this movie, I guess because they aren’t interested in movies anymore; independent distributor Ketchup Entertainment should be commended for stepping up.
The tale begins with an astronomer spotting a meteor right before it falls to earth near his observatory, contaminating a nearby bubble gum factory, and taking a bite-shaped chunk out of the roof of a farmhouse where Porky Pig and Daffy Duck (both voiced by Looney Tunes regular Eric Bauza) live together. Porky and Daffy are presented as adopted urchins and brothers-in-spirit, raised by a beloved and now-deceased surrogate father known as Farmer Jim (Fred Tatasciore).
The boys get a job at the chewing gum factory to earn enough money to repair the roof. That’s where they meet Porky’s future love interest, Petunia Pig (Candi Milo), and get enmeshed in a conspiracy: an extraterrestrial mastermind—voiced by Peter MacNicol, with delicious evilness—tries to take over the planet by infecting the population with radiation-contaminated chewing gum that transforms them into zombies. The result is a modest triumph for Browngardt and his credited team of 11 writers (don’t be alarmed by the number; apparently, there’s actually one writer, Derrick Bachman, plus another nine storyboard artists who received credit as writers—a generous gesture).
The idea of making Porky a wise but exasperated older brother figure to the impulsive, self-destructive, blabbermouth Daffy builds on the characters’ longstanding traits while adding an unexpected depth of feeling. I’ve always loved these characters, but I can’t say I ever cared about them as “people” prior to this, only because warmth was never the point of Looney Tunes. They were absurdist, chaotic presences, like the Marx Brothers, the Three Stooges, and Abbott and Costello, and that’s why they were so popular.
Warming them up without making them gooey is a trick that you wouldn’t think could be pulled off, but the filmmakers and voice actors have done it, mainly by treating Bugs and Daffy as actors who happen to playing characters who are also named Bugs and Daffy. Which is to say that the filmmakers are doing what the Jim Henson Company did after Henson’s death in “The Muppet Christmas Carol,” “Muppet Treasure Island” and “The Muppets’ Wizard of Oz,” wherein beloved Muppet characters were treated like established movie stars who’d been hired to play someone other than themselves: think of Statler and Waldorf playing the chortling ghosts of Marley and Marley in “The Muppet Christmas Carol,” or Kermit and Miss Piggy as the Mr. and Mrs. Cratchit. Some warmth and wisdom has been added to the classic Porky-Daffy rapport without neutering it. There’s even a wonderful gag near the end that depends on Porky knowing Daffy better than Daffy knows himself.
The movie is also a treat for the eyes and ears that should be seen on a big screen if possible. After a couple of decades in which every other major American animated feature seems to have been devised with 3D software set to the “huge heads and stick bodies” setting, it’s a joy to see an entirely two-dimensional movie that feels not just rendered but illustrated in a handmade way, with a bit of a child’s storybook energy.
At the same time, however, the visual sweetness is paired with the overwrought visual language (and sound design) of Hollywood sci-fi and action blockbusters. The combination of simplicity and bombast is amusing all by itself. It’s a family-friendly version of what the South Park guys did in “Team America,” a marionette movie with miniature sets that was shot to look like a Michael Bay extravaganza.
The result isn’t going to be all things to all viewers. It loses a bit of steam in the middle, and Tunes-heads might gripe about the omission of certain beloved major characters (Bugs would’ve made hilariously short work of this bad guy, and making an epic science fiction comedy with Looney Tunes characters and not including Marvin the Martian verges on artistic malpractice). Still, “The Day the Earth Blew Up” has a recognizable personality and fresh energy. It also has a tinge of boundary-pushing disreputability that’ll go over young kids’ heads but make adults laugh, as when Daffy goes into a desperate monologue about the aliens that’s oddly fixated on being probed, or when the filmmakers model certain images and sequences on scary sci-fi horror movies like “The Thing,” “Alien,” “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” and even “Prince of Darkness.” If your too-young child gets those references, start saving up for film school.
