The Day The Earth Blew Up Isn’t As Apocalyptic A Looney Tunes Movie As It Sounds

Though the first all-animation Looney Tunes film jokes about its bubblegum-based apocalypse in the title, The Day The Earth Blew Up keeps its ambitions relatively sane. The sprawling roster of WB’s classic Merrie Melodies has been curtailed to just three: Daffy Duck and Porky Pig are the stars of the show, with Petunia Pig providing the classic cartoon competence of a second-string female character. And though there are gestures towards stereotypical big-screen stakes-heighteners both old-school (the heroes need to save their home!) and new (the planet might be doomed!), it’s all treated with a light touch that never overly distracts from the annoying antics of Daffy and Porky.

Yet light is all The Day The Earth Blew Up ever is, and over 80-odd minutes of silliness, one might hope that the humor would spin off its axis or the story might extend itself past simplistic safety. The best Looney Tunes shorts don’t just make us laugh, they’re exciting and daring and smart. They break things, be they coyotes or the boundaries between audience and ‘toon. But director Peter Browngardt’s film spins like a globe, safely and predictably, running through its riffs on classic ‘50s sci-fi (and the remakes that updated their paranoia) with a mechanical diligence. Though there are certainly a few aesthetic side streets the film takes, the most outlandish thing about this Looney Tunes movie is that it’s effectively a two-hander performed by a single person.

Eric Bauza voices both Daffy and Porky admirably, playing off himself in almost every scene, from the pair’s work at a gum factory to their encounter with an extraterrestrial. There are moments when Bauza gets to riff with the film’s cackling alien (Peter MacNicol, fully committed) or the science-minded Petunia (Candi Milo), but that’s basically the whole cast of characters. Sure, Wayne Knight gets a few lines as a mayor tormented by Daffy, and Laraine Newman shows up for a brief, badgering sequence as a home inspector, but—despite being about an alien who wants to control everyone’s minds via tainted chewing gum—The Day The Earth Blew Up is a surprisingly contained affair.

In fact, it’s so contained that The Day The Earth Blew Up boasts more writers than cast members. That’s because Browngardt brought loads of his Looney Tunes Cartoons alumni in for this film, which grew out of that Max series in the first place (why it’s now being released by Ketchup Entertainment is best taken up with WBD CEO David Zaslav).

That series informs the look and feel of the film. Its jokes are rapidfire and range from classic visual gags (fish jumping upstream when a character weeps a waterfall) to more modern, Teen Titans Go!-like riffs (Daffy twerking in hopes of becoming an influencer). None of it is groundbreakingly gut-busting, but neither is it ever cringe-inducing or cheap—it’s straight-down-the-middle humor from a solid writers’ room; comedy that is the well-honed product of an efficient, productive laugh factory. Expanding from the typical four-to-six-minute shorts that make up that series’ episodes, though, can make the skeleton of the film too visible through its thin-stretched skin. It’s not that the humor ever gets sweaty, but that as the plot wears on, it’s too easy for your mind to wander to the rote story beats and your eye to drift towards the static backgrounds.

But for every sparse urban environment and half-hearted filler character design that serve as backdrops for the film’s nutty central duo, The Day The Earth Blew Up will spice things up with a brief visual pivot. The film’s opening observatory evokes the classic, rotoscoped Fleischer Superman cartoons, while a factory montage becomes an Art Deco daydream. The best of these stylish diversions enlivens one of the film’s more eye-rolling inclusions: Daffy and Porky’s origin story. While including their childhood feels like an executive-mandated movie must-have, it takes place against beatific Americana with their cherub-cheeked adoptive father Farmer Jim as a tongue-in-cheek, Ren & Stimpy-like counterpoint to his Tunes’ grotesque madness.

And The Day The Earth Blew Up could honestly stand a bit more of that madness. Whether it’s goofing on Invasion Of The Body Snatchers or The Thing or Armageddon, the sci-fi silliness always feels restrained. The moments it cuts loose—like when a hilariously gross gum monster goes ballistic—are concerned enough with being set pieces that they lose a bit of their wackiness. There’s something disheartening about a standard-issue sci-fi montage set to REM’s “It’s The End Of The World As We Know It” interrupting something as potentially subversive as a Looney Tunes film. But a serviceable, familiar caper isn’t the end of the world, and it might encourage those just getting to know the Tunes to dig into their tremendous back catalog.

Director: Peter Browngardt
Writer: Darrick Bachman, Pete Browngardt, Kevin Costello, Andrew Dickman, David Gemmill, Alex Kirwan, Ryan Kramer, Jason Reicher, Michael Ruocco, Johnny Ryan, Eddie Trigueros
Starring: Eric Bauza, Candi Milo, Peter MacNicol, Fred Tatasciore, Laraine Newman, Wayne Knight
Release Date: February 28, 2025

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