All the pictures in this post were taken directly from the movie by me.
I don't know what I find more surprising: the fact that "The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie" is the first fully animated Looney Tunes theatrical foray, or that Pete Browngardt managed to make it work so well without any prior frame of reference.
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And while I appreciate the value that films like Space Jam and Looney Tunes Back in Action provided at the time, as representative pieces of the edgy, meta-narrative culture that swept the world in the 1990s, the weight of their live-action co-stars made them feel more like desperate experiments to make iconic characters like Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, or Porky Pig work in a "modern" setting, rather than works created to celebrate the powerful legacy they left in pop culture.
Ironically, within its narrative simplicity, The Day the Earth Blew Up is the work that comes closest to achieving this, capable of engaging the viewer in a story lasting almost an hour and a half, managing an impeccable pace that mixes the slapstick we usually expect from animated shorts with a plot that's a bit denser than usual.
The result? Breaking the old stigma that these characters function only in a short film format, taking advantage of the available resources to create a simple, fun film with a timeless and beautiful level of animation.
The Day the Earth Blew Up is presented to us as a spin-off of "Looney Tunes Cartoons," a series produced by Browngardt himself and exclusive to HBO Max. This time, we follow Daffy Duck and Porky Pig, who grew up together and this time must save the Earth from a strange alien seeking to take over the world using chewing gum.
This absurd premise is nothing more than a driving force for a series of gags in which all the characters involved shine in almost equal measure, blending their more traditional elements with a modern framing (without resorting to the tricks of the previous films). It's a very entertaining film, and certainly deserves a chance.
This score was taken from my Letterboxd account.
Twitter/Instagram/Letterbox: Alxxssss
