With the advent of streaming, Saturday morning cartoons seem to be a thing of the past. Which is fine. Times change and evolve, and so do we, but it is a bit sad newer generations won’t know the joy of waking up early, scarfing down sugar cereal, and binging hours of cartoons. For me, the best was between 10-11 when it was the Looney Tunes hour which was a revolving “best of” the entire run of cartoons. No matter what was going on, we made sure we always at least watched that. It was with that fondness I stepped into The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie expecting to relive some of that magic. Imagine my dismay when not only did it pale in comparison, it’s also one of the worst movies I’ve seen in a long time.
Daffy Duck and Porky Pig are in a bind. A UFO has crashed into their house and destroyed their roof which will leave them homeless in 10 days unless they can find the money to fix it. Unlucky at finding a job, they run into Petunia Pig who works at the local gum factory and offers them a job there which they are actually good at. Trouble is brewing, however, as that UFO is actually alien slime that has contaminated the gum making all who chew it into mindless zombies that are part of an alien’s master plan to take over earth. Porky, Daffy, and Petunia team up to save the planet, destroy the alien, and have a happy ending, but even their unique skills may not be enough to pull it off.
Writing reviews like this really break my heart as I wanted nothing more than to fully enjoy this film and give it glowing praise. It has everything going for it – beloved characters, decades of inspiration to mine, and creators who truly love everything about it, but … it’s just not good.
The story is weak and contrived and outstays its welcome by a good 30 minutes. It follows a pattern we have been seeing recently where a movie comes to a logical ending point but then goes on for another 20-30 minutes which makes it feel bloated. This is why editors exist. Or it could just be with this one that the ELEVEN writers who worked on it all found everything they wrote to be too precious to leave out. Whatever the reason, it didn’t need to go on as long as it did even at a minimal 94-minute run time.
That aside, nothing else works either. Our voice actors sound like sad parodies of the characters they portray, and you can almost hear the phones that were stuck to their heads when they were recording in the studio. It tries to end with a big emotional moment that wasn’t earned, which will make you roll your eyes rather than tug on your heartstrings. But I think the most damning thing is the fact that you could have replaced Porky and Daffy with stick figures and had the same outcome. It’s the “Sexy Lamp” concept, but in this world, it would be the “Sexy Acme Anvil.”
There are just no redeeming qualities here. I would say the best part of it is when it’s over, but even then, you had to sit through such a mind-numbingly boring film that your IQ will have dropped 50 points. The only good thing about it is that you can ignore it exists and go see some of the other much better movies currently in theaters. Or pull out your DVDs of the classics and just watch them instead. At least they stand the test of time and thankfully aren’t tarnished by the mess that they have given us here.