After all the hubbub about Warner Bros and the loss of Coyote vs. Acme, I think it’s a surprise to many that we have a brand new Looney Tunes film in movie theaters in 2025 — The Day the Earth Blew Up. Now, it’s not being put out by storied WB but rather by Ketchup Entertainment, and I think we should thank them for making sure this film didn’t fall prey to the fate of other films of late.
This film is a spin-off of the current Looney Tunes Cartoons series debuting on HBO Max in the spring of 2020. The style of these shorts is closer to the late 30s and 40s Looney Tunes and Merry Melodies shorts by Tex Avery, Bob Clampett, and Arthur Davis. If you’ve watched any of those shorts, you know what you’re getting regarding visual aesthetics and humor. In this film, Daffy Duck and Porky Pig are found by a man named Farmer Jim and raised together. They share their childhood home, and after a threat of losing it because it does not meet the code, they end up getting a job at a gum company, where they find out an Alien conspiracy to take over the world with bubblegum.
The dynamic between Daffy and Porky is a more classic version we’re used to, but note this is a completely bonkers 1930s take on Daffy. I mean, bouncing around on their head and saying woo hoo hoo all over the place. He literally makes things worse most of the time in the movie, which leads to the core tension between Daffy and Porky. Porky, being the straight man and more of the hero, has much of his story tied up with Petunia Pig. I completely forgot about Petunia, who in this is a flavor scientist who’s their big help with trying to stop the takeover. The film is just filled with joke after joke. It’s a movie where I laughed the entire time; even if some were just a light chuckle to some being full-blown big laughs, it was a delight the whole time. Eric Bauza, the modern-age Mel Blanc for our times, voices both Porky and Daffy in this; they feel as familiar as they’ve always been. I don’t know if he gets as much credit as he deserves for voicing most of the Looney Tunes characters these days, and this is an excellent showcase for his talent as each character gets a whole story arc, and he has to act against himself. Candi Milo does some great work to make her version of Petunia Pig unique. Peter MacNicol is very fun as the Alien endangering the Earth.
The whole team of filmmakers should be celebrated with just how fluid the animation is and how bright and colorful the film is throughout. The visual gags are clever and wacky, just like you’d want from Looney Tunes. The Alien has a fun retro-styled design with a green pops off the screen. In my opinion, the retro American visual-styled world they live in, mixed with modern things like G-Wagon-influenced SUVs, makes it familiar to a large audience. The film is paced well and doesn’t feel like it’s staying past its welcome, even with a twist late in the movie. The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie is a very entertaining and excellently made animated movie, and it’s a good return of these characters to the movie screens. Since it escaped out into the world somehow, so I hope folks take the time to go out into the world and see it because we might not see another Looney Tunes movie for some time.
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