By Joe O’Shansky
I don’t know where to begin when it comes to what Looney Toons, Chuck Jones, and all artists at the Termite Terrace meant to me as a kid. Their insane, animated Saturday morning baubles lit my brain up like a psychedelic firework. I guess kids feel like that all the time, just pure exploration and joy, which I’ve long since forgotten, but is still weird to see. The good kind of insanity. Unlike the current kind.
I’m almost 54, so I haven’t been to a theatrical Looney Toons film in around forty years. Even then it was probably just a “best of” compilation of the old episodes during a summer matinee when you had to do something with kids who were out of school. The Day the Earth Blew Up is the first theatrical Looney Toons movie I’ve seen on purpose since back then, so it was something of a surreal experience.
The plot is as cartoonish as you could hope for in just the right, retro way. A meteor (or is it?) from outer space busts up the roof of an already crumbling house owned by one Daffy Duck and Porky Pig (both voiced by Eric Bauza). It lands in a field a few miles away, where the scientist who was tracking it (Fred Tatasciore) discovers the crash site, pays a visit, and is overtaken by a funky green goo.
Meanwhile, the local gum company, Goodie Gum, is launching an exciting new flavor for worldwide release. When Daffy and Porky realize their dilapidated home is about to get razed by a pair of Karen-esque HOA members (voiced by Lorraine Newman and Wayne Knight), and they only have a week to come up with the money to make repairs, they get jobs at Goodie Gum, where they meet flavor scientist Petunia Pig (Candi Milo), who is in charge of the roll out of the new flavor.
Daffy and Porky are both psyched to have gotten jobs to save their home, and both become enamored of Petunia. All of that happens just in time for that goo-infected scientist show up and contaminate the gum with the goo. He only has one mission. Get people to chew gum for a higher purpose. When he first turns around (with glowing green eyes) after tainting the gum, sees Daffy, then points a Donald Sutherland-level finger at him and groans “Chew”, I thought he was accusing Daffy of being a Jew. Like, damn, that got left-field dark. I figured it out, though.
It gets way more absurd afterwards. Wonderfully so. Suspension of disbelief is only where you want to look for it, otherwise just take the ride, which is one of among many reasons that, if you were raised on shit like this to begin with, it becomes quite clear how much love, care, and attention to detail is being paid to these legends, who are trying to save their own world from a supreme invader (Zazlov?), not to mention the reverence for the artists who inspired them.
The adherence to hand animation is the reason it all works so well. Whatever current crop of animators Warner Bros. has on hand, they have placed themselves in the realm of the masters who started it all. The shifts in animation styles were lovely (with hat tips to Saul Bass and Al Hirschfeld’s distinctive work). That, combined with the whiplash pacing of the comedy, that reminds me of the coked out comic rapidity that the Zuckers and Abrhams pulled off with something like Airplane!, all work wonderfully. Just throwing every gag at the wall to see what sticks. The fact that this is hand-drawn to such detail is remarkable. You don’t really see much of that on the big screen anymore. More so, when you consider how that kind of arduous work has to sell a million visual gags coming at you like an ADD sugar high.
All of that is supported by a fantastic voice cast, and some very appropriate, whacky scoring. It was weird to willingly want to see The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie, but I felt like I had to because I’ll probably never see anything quite like that in a theater again.
Though Coyote vs. Acme looks like it could be the new Roger Rabbit, so who knows? Fuck Zazlov.