Film Review: THE DAY THE EARTH BLEW UP: A LOONEY TUNES MOVIE (2024): Porky Pig, Petunia Pig and Daffy Duck Make for a Great Team in This Funny Animated Science Fiction Film

The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie Review

The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie (2024) Film Review, a movie directed by Peter Browngardt, written by Darrick Bachman, Kevin Costello and Peter Browngardt and starring Eric Bauza, Candi Milo, Peter MacNicol, Carlos Alazraqui, Fred Tatasciore, Kimberly Brooks, Laraine Newman, Wayne Knight, Rachel Butera and Andrew Kishino.

Porky Pig, Petunia Pig and Daffy Duck team up to save the world in an enjoyable new animated science fiction film, The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie. Farmer Jim (voice of Fred Tatasciore) is always looking out for our lovable misfits, Daffy and Porky, who wouldn’t mind getting jobs and making themselves useful. They get the opportunity to help Petunia Pig when aliens arrive to control the minds of the local population.

This film, directed by Peter Browngardt, has a good time with its characters and sets up plenty of hilarious scenarios that will keep audiences happy who would even go to see this movie in the first place. While it’s pleasurable to watch, it would certainly help if one was familiar with the Warner Bros. cartoons from which these characters originated.

For me, two hilarious scenes stood out as the funniest ones here. One is an ode to the bond between our main heroes in which the song, “(Everything I Do) I Do it For You” by Bryan Adams, plays on the soundtrack. It’s quite unexpected and makes for a wildly funny sequence in a film full of offbeat comic scenarios. Then, the second great scene is when the heroic team of characters use wind-up false teeth to get to the many pieces of chewing gum that will cause an explosion which would help them considerably in their attempts to save the world from the aliens at large. When the teeth stop winding and one of our characters has to plummet down and re-start them, things get even more interesting. Daffy Duck is at his funniest in this scene.

Of course, the movie would be only half as good as it is if it didn’t feature the fabulous trio shooting zombies and getting the creatures out of them to wipe the bad monsters out for good. Petunia Pig has the most enjoyable personality, and she’s voiced with wild charisma by Candi Milo. Eric Bauza has the distinction of doing the unique voices of the two other heroic characters: Daffy and Porky. These voice talents are on-point, making the personalities shine and the entertainment value of the picture increase. Peter MacNicol voices an alien leader with sly wickedness as well which makes him another intriguing character in this animated free-for-all.

There are minor quibbles one could have with the film. There’s simply not enough plot to pad this premise for its feature-length. So, the movie goes off on tangents and brings in a romance between Porky and Petunia. That was expected, but the film also pretends one of its key characters is killed unconvincingly which makes the whole scenario feel like time-filler. Yet, despite complaints like these, the movie is true to the original vibe that the old WB cartoons had.

Watching this movie is like revisiting the old-school cartoons which occasionally took pot shots at different topics which went off target in regard to what the story lines of the animated tales were focused on. However, it’s great to get to see these characters on the big screen as inventor Petunia tries to create different flavors of gum while saving the world. Only in a cartoon feature like this can you have a field day watching old-time animated heroes act goofy and, for the most part, move a convoluted plot along convincingly for the kiddos.

For younger viewers, this film’s message of the power of teamwork and overcoming obstacles that get in the way is an important one. Young kids will certainly laugh at Daffy’s wild behavior, but the message of coming together in times of need by working together as a team is the film’s finest accomplishment for those younger audiences.

For all its cleverly constructed action scenes and humorous attempts at distinctly differentiating the personalities of the heroes from the aliens, The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie will whet the appetite for more cartoons with these characters at the helm and while I wouldn’t want to see a lot of feature films with them, I enjoyed this one for its ingenuity.

Porky, Daffy and Petunia are nice to see in YouTube shorts or on streaming but, next time out, they may want to sprinkle three or four plots in the next Looney Tunes movie to maintain total interest throughout a 90-minute running time. This one gets a pass because of all the times it puts a smile on the viewer’s face just when you think it’s close to running out of steam. That’s… that’s all folks.

Rating: 7/10

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