Looney Tunes: The Day The Earth Blew Up: the ’toons return to form

Porky Pig, Daffy Duck and the other major stars of the Warner Bros Looney Tunes cartoons were born in the shadow of Mickey Mouse and spent their early careers ignored by their corporate masters (who had real, flesh-and-blood movie stars to worry about). Their personalities were built gradually by animation directors like Tex Avery, Bob Clampett and Frank Tashlin, who, in the absence of serious critical attention, satisfied themselves by one-upping each other. The spirit of energy and experimentation in the late 1930s and early 40s Warner cartoons was mostly gone by the mid 50s, when budgets had dropped and formulas calcified.

One happy surprise of The Day the Earth Blew Up is that it liberates its octogenarian cartoon stars from several decades of rigorous brand management, searching instead for that original spirit of fun and invention. For one thing, it shakes off the influence of Chuck Jones, whose cartoons like What’s Opera, Doc? (1957) were the undisputed highlights of the latter-day Looney Tunes, and whose vision for the characters was thus set in stone for multiple generations. Under Jones, Porky was mostly a genial sidekick, while Daffy was transformed from the manic troublemaker of his 1930s appearances to a mere aggrieved foil for Bugs Bunny. More recent films, like Space Jam (1996) and Looney Tunes: Back in Action (2003), have essentially followed this gospel.

Bugs is nowhere to be found in this film, which takes a rambunctious 1946 Porky and Daffy cartoon, Baby Bottleneck, as its main touchstone. In contrast to Jones’s austere style, director Pete Browngardt draws inspiration from the visual maximalism of Clampett, whose characters were always in motion. The Day the Earth Blew Up infuses that influence with a contemporary rhythm reminiscent of Adult Swim and web cartoons. 

With his army of writers, Browngardt solves the question of how to adapt these characters to feature length by simply plugging them into a buddy-comedy template and having faith that their eccentricities will generate enough tension and warmth to sustain it. Like so many of the great comedians, Daffy exists on the right side of the knife edge between charismatic and irritating. Of course, the story (which involves the ’toons taking work at a bubblegum factory and uncovering an alien-invasion plot) is a clothesline for gags, and they are consistently funny. For a movie with the words ‘Looney Tunes’ in the title, that’s the whole ballgame.

► Looney Tunes: The Day The Earth Blew Up is in UK cinemas 13 February.