The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie (2024)

The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie

For most people, David Zaslav’s face comes to mind when they hear the term “cartoon villain”. He banned not just one, but two feature-length Looney Tunes projects following his takeover of Warner Bros. In November of last year, there was the “Coyote vs. Acme” movie, which was hybrid in using both animation and live-action, which received the ‘Batgirl treatment’ (although the logic of a tax write-off makes no sense as in this case, the movie has been completed, unlike that one). Less marketable but no less deserving of an audience, ‘The Day the Earth Blew Up’ featured hand-drawn animation of Porky Pig and Daffy Duck, produced by Warner Bros Animation for the Max app, but was put up for sale last fall. It has still not been able to secure a US distributor.

Luckily, that did not keep the Annecy Animation Festival from hosting a world premiere for “The Day the Earth Blew Up” – and, one hopes, a better opportunity for it to see the light of day. (WB Germany will torpedo it on August 1, with some international territories closely behind.) As it turns out, “Day” is a better time than any film the studio last released since “The Lego Movie 2” and a unique opportunity to see Porky and Daffy dabble in something other than shooting hoops or selling products. This way, the pair are like their juiced-up 21st-century versions, like those seen in a recent spree of Looney Tunes shorts, of which the film’s director, Peter Browngardt, has supervised up to five.

A mind control plot involving e.t. goo chewing gum that could infect humans and turn them into zombies is not the best plot, but it is definitely leaning towards being crazy enough for the stuttering pig and the duck whose bellyaches in both concept and delivery shared a two-story house that Farmer Jim left them when they were both kids and properly adopted by the burly dad figure. Shakespeare may be dead, but he doesn’t own the narrative because it’s a story on two sides to pigs and ducks.

Browngardt gets the first big laughs by showing the brief histories of Porky and Daffy as kids, as well as showcasing a vignette of them looking for jobs in a style that resembles the antics of a traditional Looney Tunes cartoon. Although it’s fun to watch these two whom we now regard as old friends and hear them go “spuh speech impediment” — there’s that “something” I can’t put my finger on. It is about their ways that somehow incorporate stylistic changes of another dimension – Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network – into the universe of Looney Tunes. Specifically, Sponge Bob Square Pants. (This is not a coincidence; there are five screenwriters who have worked with that franchise.)

One just has to look at the poster: the promotional characters seem to cry more in this film than nine decades of ten Looney Tunes nominees for the Oscar who won twice combined. Eric Bauza, the Vocal MVP who voices both Porky and Daffy, possesses that much sanity and excitement for the characters. Daffy attends a meeting with green-skinned space invader -thank you Peter MacNicol – who plays a male Plankton (more elongated) only to be turned to jelly in the movie’s last act. With a few minor changes, the audience could have imagined a life that revolved around Nemo’s house and not around Porky and Daffy’s decayed homestead.

“Day” doesn’t waste time and starts with: a threatening asteroid from space and a CG flying saucer that crashes a massive glowing goo ball into the home of Porky and Daffy. While the alien ectoplasm takes control of the lab-coated Scientist (Fred Tatasciore voices both him and Father Jim), the ghost also possesses him and Jim. Ectoplasm is capable of transforming humans into zombies indeed a scary scenario, especially since the Scientist pours a suitcase full of the stuff into the new Goodie Gum’s flavor, Super Strong Berry.

In a matter of time, the masses are going to get a taste of the bubblicious new release taking control of their brains and making them subservient to the calls of Invader. Daffy is a raving lunatic, a conspiracy theorist, and for some surprisingly logical reason, he’s always the first one to connect the dots. The difficulty lies in the ability to make people understand that Goodie Gum has been used as a brainwashing device by extraterrestrials, which implies that Daffy, Porky and Daffy’s new girlfriend Petunia Pig (Candi Milo) will actually have to do it themselves. Petunia is employed as a gum factory’s flavors’ tester whose job involves biting off everything from a used sock to rotten eggs. This woman appears to be an overqualified geek in contrast to those two humorously inefficient fools and they make a perfect pair.

Even if things get weird, “Day” retains the viewers’ emotions by dwelling on three important themes. First, there is the veritable but indefinable affection that holds Porky and Daffy together, now placed within the context of what could destroy planet Earth. There’s also their love for their house but that too is under threat now; and so on. And there is also hardly a burgeoning romance between Porky and Petunia that is a known fact and is integral to the action. Daffy (the character who wants above all else to try breaking things with a wooden mallet) is good only the first few times, however, the project as a whole and a few funny asides breaking the fourth wall included have been really made with warmth and good attitude towards the franchise. Viewers are advised to stay through the credits for the second part like the current WB regime will pretend to have when no such intentions exist.

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