“The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie” Review

There’s a reason the Looney Tunes was one of the longest-running cartoon reruns of Saturday morning cartoons. There was a versatile nature to the characters where they could be fun in almost any scenario they were slammed with, be it outwitting a hunter or terrorizing a monster. But the Looney Tunes can only work if there’s faith in letting them take the wheel. Most Looney Tunes short films and TV series knew the score. Looney Tunes movies, however, have been another story. From the pastiche anthology of Quackbusters to the live-action hybrid of Space Jam, the theatrical treatment of Looney Tunes has always been known for the brand’s legacy more than anything else.

The Day the Earth Blew Up is a milestone of not only being the first fully-animated Looney Tunes movie but also the first movie to understand what makes Looney Tunes so damn good. This is not a meta film that constantly reminds the audience of the legacy of these characters and who they are owned by. It’s a comical story for the Looney Tunes characters to jump within and perform all their zany antics. It’s an aspect that the many creatives who worked on the recent Looney Tunes Cartoons realized, including Pete Browngardt making his feature-film debut (and a strong one at that).

The film plays it straight like a Looney Tunes short, starring the charming duo of an eccentric Daffy Duck and straight-man Porky Pig (both voiced by Eric Bauza). They find themselves as roommates (maybe brothers?) trying to take care of their adoptive father’s house. With no money to repair the roof, they land jobs at a gum factory. While working there, Porky falls for quirky scientist Petunia (Candi Milo). As that romance blossoms, Daffy stumbles onto an alien invasion plot involving gum and a theatrical alien invader (Peter MacNicol). The duck-pig duo must put aside their differences to save the Earth and their home.

Given this team’s fantastic animation work on past Looney Tunes projects, I expected the film to look great. This film is a treat for the eyes. Technology has improved so much that it’s not uncommon to see 2D-animated independent films pop up in the theater. But I felt like a kid again watching a highly expressive Looney Tunes picture with gorgeous traditional animation. All the wild slapstick and exaggerated drawings tickled me so much that I could watch the film on mute and still be impressed by the life in this film.

But what’s more surprising is the script attached to this long-form Looney Tunes story. Here’s a film with so much going on that it could go on autopilot by relying on its sci-fi staging and romantic misunderstandings to carry the humor in a pastiche style. Yet there’s some strong drama placed in the conflict between Daffy and Porky. Their relationship is tested while still maintaining the silliness one would expect from these characters. There’s a rather heartfelt moment where Daffy is furious at Porky for not involving him in his save-the-world plot. In that heated moment, there’s still a hilarious line about Daffy laying eggs. There’s some heart to this film, but it comes in comical cartoon form, where tearful admissions have eyeballs looking like a bursting Hoover Dam or have salmon swimming through tear ducts. There’s genuine emotion that only the most astute animators could wield with unbelievable cleverness and confidence.

Despite the modern inclusions, such as Daffy’s consideration of being a big-butt influencer, this film embraces the look, feel, and weirdness of a 1950s B-movie. There are some charming references to Invasion of the Body Snatchers and some retro character designs, especially the stern scientist who feels as though he were plucked from a sci-fi comic of the era. But when it comes time for danger to be present, the film doesn’t cheap out on the sci-fi weirdness. How alien gum mutates into a grotesque monster of eyes and teeth is freaky enough to share in Daffy’s horrified screams. There’s real tension for the fate of the Earth that never felt as though the hilarity has to stop dead for some serious moments of growth. It’s a film that can be exciting with its build while still having Daffy wink at the camera about foreshadowing.

Wondrous and wacky, The Day the Earth Blew Up lives up to the hype as one of the best Looney Tunes movies ever made. That’s a low bar, I know, given there’s never before been a Looney Tunes movie without a reliance on archival cartoons or live-action performances. The bar has been set high now, considering how much fun this film was. It’s a visually and narratively satiating movie that realizes Looney Tunes are more interesting beyond the concept of intellectual property. The team behind this film knew what they were doing by proving a plot of home repair and an alien invasion could be enough for Daffy and Porky to shine. You don’t need many pop culture citations to make Daffy work. Sometimes, you have to give him a mallet and let him hoot and holler all over the place. Doing so saves the Earth in this film and the Looney Tunes from falling into the trappings of cartoons that change their shape to fit the times. For a movie that seems trapped in the 1950s, it feels fresher than past Looney Tunes iterations. Funnier, too.