Sufferin' succotash, it's a a Looney Tunes movie to love!
This movie is different. Director Peter Browngardt and his 11 (!) writers pay loving homage to Termite Terrace (the place on the WB lot where the original cartoons were drawn). There are several in-jokes that honor directors like Bob Clampett One of the earliest Looney Tunes characters, Beans the Cat, gets a shoutout as well. The filmmakers even mimic music director Carl Stalling's use of the
Porky Pig and Daffy Duck in "The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie."
Warner Bros. Animation
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Most importantly, 'The Day the Earth Blew Up' puts three Looney Tunes characters at the center of the story. They're the heroes, and their personalities are recognizable from all the old cartoon shorts they appeared in back in the day. The 2-D animation is also a welcome throwback.
Fans of Bugs Bunny will be disappointed — he's nowhere to be found here. But his absence makes sense. Unlike the other Looney Tunes characters, Bugs exists on a higher plane of power. He's pretty much invincible (except when directed by Clampett), and easily bests his foes. In this story of an alien invasion taking over the Earth, Bugs would save the day without much effort.
Instead, our heroes are the far more fallible Porky Pig and Daffy Duck (both expertly voiced by Eric Bauza) — Termite Terrace's first big breakout stars. In a prologue, they're discovered as orphans by a gigantic farmer named Farmer Jim, who looks like a hirsute advertisement billboard. He bequeaths his house to them, which they let slip into disrepair.
Unfortunately, the duo forgot the upcoming inspection by the town's meanest property inspector, Mrs. Grecht ('Saturday Night Live' alum Laraine Newman), a blond woman whose shapely, R-rated body is poured into a PG-rated pink outfit. Making matters worse is that neither Porky nor Daffy has noticed the gigantic, slime-covered hole in their roof made by a meteor the night before.
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Daffy Duck and Porky Pig in "The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie."
Warner Bros. Animation
Given one week to make the necessary fixes to keep their home from being condemned, Porky and Daffy have to do something no Looney Tunes character has done before: get a job. They find one at a bubble-gum factory, where Porky falls for his usual girlfriend, Petunia Pig (Candi Milo). She's a scientist trying out new flavors of gum using some rather disgusting ingredients.
The gum factory's newest flavor (actually, an old flavor with a new name, as Petunia angrily points out) is getting a rollout on the same day the alien who sent the aforementioned meteor plans to use it to control the populace. And no, it's not Marvin the Martian doing the takeover; it's The Invader, a creepy green menace voiced by Peter MacNicol in a nod to the sci-fi movies of the 1950s like 'The Day the Earth Stood Still.'
Daffy catches on to the sinister bubble-gum alien plot early, but since he's a conspiracy theorist (and, as his theme song goes, he's also loony), nobody believes him initially. Once the possessed townspeople offer proof, it's up to Porky, Petunia, and Daffy to save the day.
Daffy Duck in "The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie."
Warner Bros. Animation
'The Day the Earth Blew Up' keeps the dynamic between Porky and Daffy that appeared in such cartoons as Chuck Jones's 1953 space opera 'Duck Dodgers in the 24-1/2th Century' — Daffy's the loudmouth wannabe hero while Porky's the more level-headed (and smarter) sidekick. There's also a touch of the Porky-Sylvester the Cat cartoon pairings where a terrified 'fraidy cat' Sylvester notices something evil well before a disbelieving Porky does.
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The fact that this film makes reference to such inside baseball-style details and touches shows how deeply it wants to impress Looney Tunes fans. And it's pretty funny, too, quick and loose like the old-school cartoons but with a feature-length plot.
Come to think of it, there really hasn't been an original Looney Tunes movie. The ones from the 1970s and 1980s, like 'The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Movie,' were compilations of the old cartoons stitched together by the barest of plots. And the other movies were mixes of live action and animation that didn't focus entirely on the characters.
So, in a way, 'The Day the Earth Blew Up' is the first true example of these characters controlling their own original storyline on the big screen. This Looney Tunes mega-fan went in fearing the worst, and came out happy that I
★★★
THE DAY THE EARTH BLEW UP: A LOONEY TUNES MOVIE
Directed by Peter Browngardt. Written by Browngardt, Alex Kirwan, Katie Rice, Darrick Bachman, Andrew Dickman, Eddie Trigueros, David Gemmill, Ryan Kramer, Johnny Ryan, Jason Reicher, Michael Ruocco. Starring Eric Bauza, Candi Milo, Peter MacNicol, Laraine Newman. At AMC Causeway 13, suburbs. 91 min. PG (cartoon violence — that's all, folks)
Odie Henderson is the Boston Globe's film critic.
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