OK, let me see if I have this straight: Warner Brother made a Looney Tunes movie, one that is hand-drawn, does not feature any celebrity voices save some minor ones who do a lot of voice work these days anyway, and the main star is not Bugs Bunny? While perhaps intended for Max, the movie instead had a theatrical release. Oh, and on top of everything else, the movie has a high Rotten Tomatoes score? How did that happen? This is the studio that made Coyote vs Acme, a movie that everyone who has seen it swears that it was great, and then decided not to release it for tax reasons. I mean, I’m a huge Looney Tunes fan. I did not see that Daffy Duck and Porky Pig would be starring in a feature-length, theatrically-released movie in 2025, like, at all.
I mean, of course I went to see it.
After a suitably eerie, yet silly, opening scene involving a spaceship headed towards Earth, seen only by a long scientist (Fred Tatasciore), the movie opens when the largely immobile Farmer Jim (also Tatasciore) finds babies Daffy Duck and Porky Pig (both Eric Bauza). Taking the pair in, he raises them during the opening credits before leaving them the farmhouse and heading off to parts unknown. Years later, the lifelong friends are still living in the house, and it is time for the annual house inspection to make sure the place is still safe to live in, when the home inspector points out a giant hole in the roof. If the boys want to keep their house, they have ten days to fix the hole, or else their home will be condemned and they’ll be living on the street.
Seeing they need a job, and proving suitably bad at the task, often because of Daffy, the pair luck out and get a job at the big chewing gum factory in their hometown. The job has perks for Porky in the form of flavor scientist Petunia Pig (Candi Milo), and Daffy, well, he has reason to believe that the alien invaders that he has long believed in are doing something to the gum, something that will affect anyone who chews the company’s exciting new flavor. And since that alien (Peter MacNicol) is laughing maniacally off to the side, Daffy might be right. The guys are a pair of screw-ups, each for their own individual reasons, but they’re going to have to get their act together to save the world. I mean, the movie’s title is not entirely incorrect…
As I was watching this movie, at a certain point, I realized I was smiling. I did laugh out loud a couple times, and there are some good jokes here. And the jokes often come quickly enough that the viewer might get one they like if they just wait for it. It’s a movie where the plot doesn’t stand still and moves pretty quickly, appropriate given the movie runs around 90 minutes as it is, and I really dug it. It’s probably worth noting that the movie’s tone is something of a combination of modern animation and comedy with a good bit of the 1940s Looney Tunes style. The Daffy Duck of this movie isn’t the schemer that becomes, in his own words, a “greedy, little coward.” No, this is the one who bounces around going “woo hoo!” while smashing things with a mallet for no reason. Porky, meanwhile, has his own thing going on as he tries to romance Petunia, and both guys really revere Farmer Jim.
If you want the best connection to where this movie’s style and comedy comes from, it’s subtle, but there are actual clues with some minor Easter Eggs with businesses named for former Warner Brothers animators Tex Avery and (particularly) Bob Clampett (whose daughter Ruth voices a friendly waitress). Clampett’s work, if you know it, has a distinctive style with more elastic bodies and insane plot twists that come closest to what’s going on in The Way the Earth Blew Up. I won’t call it the greatest Looney Tunes product ever made. I would still take the classic shorts over this movie. But this is original, made by people who appear to really love the old shorts and the characters of Daffy Duck and Porky Pig, and cripes, it’s a hand-drawn cartoon in the days of CGI animated cartoons coming from, like, everyone else. I would love it if Warner Brother Animation made more of these, not just with Daffy and Porky, but with the many other classic Looney Tunes characters. Heck, they can still do stuff without Bugs Bunny if I get more fun movies like The Day the Earth Blew Up.
Grade: B
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