It’s hard to reconcile Warner Bros. Animation’s hazardous brand stewardship alongside a net positive result like The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie. Having removed hundreds of episodes of the beloved Looney Tunes shorts from the Max streaming service for cost-cutting measures and having cancelled Coyote Vs. Acme post-production for tax write-offs, the fact that the new Looney Tunes movie would otherwise create some goodwill does not necessarily let the studio off the hook. That they then put Coyote Vs. Acme up for sale and rejected every offer to buy it, showed their disdain for the artists who deserve their work to be seen. That’s where distributor Ketchup Entertainment has stepped in, and distributed the first-ever big budget Looney Tunes movie with a worldwide theatrical release. If Warner Bros. won’t, then damn it, let someone else do the good job for them.
Taken on its own terms, The Day the Earth Blew Up is such a pure and successful translation of the core Looney Tunes design philosophy, lovingly created for theatrical distribution. That it succeeds by its own merits and is a win for animated films, exuding the depth of animation of the original Bob Clampett designs and the personality and flair of Tex Avery’s mind for characters.
The Day the Earth Blew Up centers Daffy Duck and Porky Pig (both voiced by Eric Bauza), lending them a brotherly backstory beautifully rendered with nostalgic appeal. It’s full of cute details, big and small, down to such simple cartoon conceits – like Porky’s stutter coming from Daffy’s flagrant recklessness, causing early brain injury to the pig. It’s for laughs, you know.
Cut to modern day and the duck and pig have continued their brotherly bond. They now live together in a dilapidated home which is due for inspection and plausible eviction of the Tunes. Worse yet, after the boys fix up the place, some aliens crash land through the roof, and now the companions must find some work so they can afford the repairs.
It goes badly for them on the job market. A series of funny mishaps results in them being fired from every job until they land at a bubblegum factory where they have to press a button and pull a lever and basically, that works out… until the gum is contaminated by the very same aliens, who want to turn everyone into zombies.
The animation quality is high, harkening back to the halcyon days of Warner Bros. animation. The Day the Earth Blew Up is built up of small character details and a consistent conception for how those characters interact and exist within their world. It does so much with our known main characters but also makes tidy work of existent but neglected Porky love interest Petunia Pig (Candi Milo), and new characters like origin-centric Paul Bunyan-looking father figure Farmer Jim (Fred Tatasciore) and the eccentric alien Invader (Peter MacNicol).
Smooth and buttery animation compliments a fun and clever story that feels like a composite of various sketches, evidence of the eleven credited writers, and the steady feature debut direction of Peter Browngardt. When a good storyboard artist directs an animated film, the proof is in the pudding, and everything goes over so smoothly and with such coordinated design that the end result feels cohesive. The Day the Earth Blew Up is everything a Looney Tunes movie should be and most of all, it’s a load of fun.