Given the well-publicized fate of the ostensibly never-to-be-released Coyote vs. Acme, it’s sort of a miracle that there’s a new Looney Tunes movie at all, whether or not you actually find yourself charmed by The Day the Earth Blew Up. But game viewers will be treated to an amusingly silly, characteristically non-sequitur-filled mashup of styles, genres, and stupidity, lovingly animated and with just the right combination of modern technique and traditional gags to hit the nostalgia sweet spot.
Starting out as a spoof of alien invasion movies, The Day the Earth Blew Up begins with a mysterious asteroid hurtling toward Earth, bearing an organism that implants itself in a chewing gum factory, thereby making anyone who chews said gum a mind-controlled zombie. Naturally, it’s up to our two heroes, the incorrigible egomaniac Daffy Duck and his cowardly, stuttering foster brother Porky Pig (both voiced by Eric Bauza), to save the day. Along the way, they team up with gum-flavoring scientist Petunia (Candi Milo), on whom Porky of course nurses an unrequited crush.
The Day the Earth Blew Up’s biggest challenge isn’t being funny, although it probably could stand to be consistently funnier. Rather, it’s that the film stands in tension with Looney Tunes’ history, where shorts have traditionally only been about seven minutes long. Even the old “features” that were coming out decades ago were just repackaged collections of old short-form cartoons. And then there are the live-action mashups like Space Jam (and its unfortunate sequel) or Joe Dante’s unsurprisingly lively and reverent Back in Action, which utilize worlds-colliding frameworks to help organically fill out their runtimes. But that fact remains that extending one of these perfect little narrative gems to over 80 minutes might stretch anyone’s patience; a little of this sort of thing goes a long way.
The Day the Earth Blew Up does manage to partially combat this problem by switching up styles — here’s a musical number, there’s a short within the movie about Porky and Daffy getting a job, here’s the backstory about their growing up as adoptees of the literally gigantic Farmer Jim (easily the funniest running bit here). Director Peter Browngardt also adopts some stylistic touches from more recent animation touchstones; it’s hard not to recognize the subversively innocuous-seeming nods to, say, Ren and Stimpy or Spongebob. It’s just enough to keep the tone appropriately jumbled and the jokes varied, even as they’re not all landing. And if you happen to be one of those ‘80s or ‘90s latchkey kids who grew up mainlining hours of old cartoons on cable after school every weekday, The Day the Earth Blew Up is likely to hit the spot.
DIRECTOR: Peter Browngardt; CAST: Eric Bauza, Peter MacNicol, Candi Milo, Laraine Newman; DISTRIBUTOR: Ketchup Entertainment; IN THEATERS: March 14; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 31 min.
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