The Day The Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie

Unlikely heroes, Porky Pig, Daffy Duck, and Petunia Pig, become the Earth's only hope when they uncover a secret alien mind-control plot while working at the local bubble-gum factory.

Everyone knows the Looney Tunes.

A series of animated shorts from Warner Bros, starting in the 1930s as an answer to Disney’s Silly Symphonies, the Looney Tunes would eventually come to feature a huge cast of famous characters... Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Elmer Fudd, Porky Pig, Marvin the Martian, Wile E. Coyote, the Roadrunner, Sylvester, Tweety Bird, Yosemite Sam, Foghorn Leghorn. On and on and on.

They're kind of a big deal.

But before them, there were others…

The first Looney Tune cartoon was called “Sinkin’ in the Bathtub,” which was a play on the popular 1929 song "Singin' in the Bathtub,” and it was released in the presumably antitrust-law-violating Warner Bros. Theater in Hollywood on April 19, 1930. The cartoon featured the Looney Tunes franchise’s then star character, Bosko, The Talk-Ink Kid, described as a little “Negro boy” sort of a cartoon version of Al Jolson in The Jazz Singer, and his girlfriend, Honey, created by Rudolf Ising and Hugh Harman. Bosko was well known for his catchphrase "Mmmm! Dat sho' is fine!" The cartoon "Sinkin' in the Bathtub" featured Bosko and Honey a'bathing and a'courting, and then driving to the countryside, presumably to find a place to fuck, all while singing and overcoming a variety of odd obstacles that were standing in the way of their implied eventual coitus.

These incredibly racist abominations starred in nearly four dozen cartoons before they were finally shelved around 1933-ish.

After Harman and Ising were fired—not for being super racist (because much like now, it was totally cool to be openly racist back then), but for costing the studio too much—and since they owned the rights to Bosko and Honey, Tom Palmer created a new character called Buddy.

Usually depicted as a young man in a jacket with a small bow tie and long pants, and a face and hair style vaguely reminiscent of Peter Lorre, Buddy is a character who was doomed from the very start. Warner Bros disliked his first two cartoons so much, they fired creator Tom Palmer and hired Friz Freleng to come in and re-edit the cartoons, and also condense them down into one single episode.

Often accompanied by Cookie, his flapper girlfriend, or his dog, Towser, Buddy is now widely considered to be the worst character in the history of the Looney Tunes franchise, which is really saying something, as there is also a famous Looney Tunes character whose entire hook is that he’s a smelly Frenchman, as well as a serial sex pest. Still, despite only being notable for how incredibly bland and forgettable he is, Buddy was the Looney Tunes franchise’s big star from 1933 to 1935, appearing in nearly two dozen cartoons.

It’s at this point that some new directors, Tex Avery, Chuck Jones, Bob Clampett, and Robert McKimson, as well as voice actor Mel Blanc, were brought in. Then, in 1935, Porky Pig debuted in I Haven't Got a Hat, directed by Friz Freleng, alongside a gaggle of doomed also-ran characters bound for limbo like Beans the Cat, Oliver Owl, and the twin dogs, Ham and Ex.

Eventually they were all shelved, and only Porky remained.

As Looney Tunes began to switch to color, other star characters soon followed. Daffy Duck in Porky's Duck Hunt in 1937. Elmer Fudd in Elmer's Candid Camera in 1940. Tweety Bird in A Tale of Two Kitties in 1942. And of course, the great and terrible Trickster God himself, Bugs Bunny, who first appeared in A Wild Hare in 1940, before formally joining the Looney Tunes series with Buckaroo Bugs in 1944.

And thus, the Golden era began…

A slew of more popular characters followed. Pepé Le Pew in 1945's Odor-able Kitty, Sylvester in 1945's Life with Feathers, Yosemite Sam in 1945's Hare Trigger, Foghorn Leghorn in 1946's Walky Talky Hawky, Marvin the Martian in 1948's Haredevil Hare, Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner in 1949's Fast and Furry-ous, Granny in 1950's Canary Row, Speedy Gonzales in 1953's Cat Tails for Two, the Tasmanian Devil in 1954's Devil May Hare, and Ralph Wolf and Sam Sheepdog in 1953's Don't Give Up the Sheep.

For twenty years, from the early 40s to the early 60s, Looney Tunes were the most popular cartoons in movie theaters. It was during this time that the Looney Tunes franchise won five Academy Awards for Best Short Subject (Cartoon) out of nearly 30 nominations: Tweetie Pie (1947), For Scent-imental Reasons (1949), Speedy Gonzales (1955), Birds Anonymous (1957), and Knighty Knight Bugs (1958)

One of the highest-grossing media franchises of all time, Looney Tunes has had several television series, multiple feature films, an untold number of comic books, music albums, and video games, on and on and on. The myriad characters long ago became cultural icons, and many of their cartoons are among some of the greatest of all time. Plus, the Looney Tune franchise is directly responsible for introducing at least two generations of children not only to all sorts of pop culture references of bygone eras, but to a slew of real world history and literary allusions as well as, not to mention a significant amount of classical music and opera…

And sure, some parts have not exactly aged as well as others, but overall all, it’s not as bad as some similarly aged pop culture franchises.

Some of it was even ahead of its time…

So anyway, this movie…

One day, in the small town of Grandview, Farmer Jim finds an abandoned baby Daffy Duck and a baby Porky Pig, and he decides to raise them as his own on his farm. The pair grow up together happily, as brothers.

Time passes, and eventually Farmer Jim literally fades away into the sunset, leaving everything to Porky and Daffy, after making them promise to always stick together. The years continue to pass, and the area around their farm is gentrified.

This is bad news for Porky and Daffy, as their house is basically a teetering junk-heap, because they both live like pigs, even though one of them is a duck.

Their permanent male roommate lifestyle attracts the attention of the vicious and irredeemably evil local HOA President, Mrs. Grecht, a monstrous Karen who hates the fact that Porky Pig and Daffy Duck refuse to conform to her vision of a boring and mediocre suburban world, and wants to run them off their land.

This is extra bad news for our looney heroes, as just the night before, a scientist discovered that an asteroid heading towards Earth was also hiding a ufo. The ufo smashed through Porky and Daffy’s roof on its way to crashing into a nearby field. When the scientist investigated, he vanished. But Porky and Daffy slept through the whole thing, and woke up on the morning of their big HOA inspection to find an inexplicably massive hole blasted through their roof.

Now, the pair must get jobs in order to make enough money to pay for a new roof, so that their home won’t be condemned, and they won’t be forced out on the street. What could go wrong?

Everything.

They are fired, fired, fired, fired, and fired again, from a series of jobs, and all due to Daffy's complete inability to contain his looney antics.

Despondent, and growing desperate as time is quickly running out, the duo happens to meet Petunia Pig while at the local diner. Petunia is a flavor scientist at the Goodie Gum factory. She is driven to create the perfect flavor, and is currently very, very bitter about the soon to be released new flavor from Goodie Gum, which she considers to be overblown, trashy, and inelegant, not to mention vastly inferior to her own newly invented flavor, even if her flavor does have a tendency to make the gum explode upon chewing. But when she hears their story, she offers Porky and Daffy a job at the factory, and they accept.

After completing their first shift with no issues, due to a mighty effort on Daffy’s part, the duck discovers a scientist—not realizing it is the same one who vanished while investigating the ufo crash—is pouring some green goo into the gum supply. Recognizing the goo as the same substance that was lining the unexplained hole in their roof, Daffy tries to tell Porky, but Porky, desperate to hold onto the job, not to mention impress Petunia, dismisses it as the usual Daffy paranoia.

But Daffy will not be deterred.

When the new gum flavor is launched worldwide, Daffy realizes that everyone chewing the gum is turning into a zombie, so he crashes the launch party, seizing the microphone in order to warn the public, but he only sounds like a crazy duck, so he ends up getting arrested.

Also, he and Porky are fired.

A frustrated Porky bails Daffy out of jail, and the duo meets up with Petunia. Daffy asks her to investigate a gum sample, and Petunia is willing to help, because she’s a big-time hater about the new flavor (mad respect), and they quickly discover that an alien invader, known as The Invader, and his gum zombie slaves, including the scientist, has contaminated the gum.

When the Invader realizes that they are on to him, he turns the trio’s gum sample into a monster, and has it try to eliminate the three, but they manage to defeat it.

Armed with a new plan as a result, Porky and Petunia go to free the zombified populace, but decide to try to leave Daffy at home, fearing that he might go apeshit during their attempt, and end up ruining the plan, but…

Well, you can probably guess.

Soon enough, they’re cornered by gum zombies.

Eventually, Petunia is captured, and Porky and Daffy's house is destroyed, and then, they’re abducted by the Invader and imprisoned on his ship. The stress is too much and Porky and Daffy have a falling out. As they watch from their cell, all of Earth's population falls under the Invader's control, and he then has the zombies blow a bubble big enough to encase the entire planet.

This is when Daffy and Porky reconcile.

They escape, free Petunia and the scientist, and pop the bubble.

Unfortunately, it turns out that the Invader was actually trying to protect the Earth, because he loves boba tea and Earth is the only place you can get it. He was doing all of this because the asteroid from the beginning of the film is still hurtling straight at the planet. The Invader intended to use the gum bubble as a shield in order to bounce the asteroid away, obviously, which would have saved the Earth and its boba tea. But Porky and Daffy and Petunia ruined the plan.

A pretty awkward moment for Porky, Petunia, and Daffy…

But then, a new plan!

The group decides that Porky, Petunia, and Daffy will take Petunia's exploding gum deep within the asteroid, place it around the asteroid’s volatile crystal center, and then loose a surplus of wind-up walking novelty teeth upon the pile, which will then chew up the gum, causing it to explode, shattering the crystal center, and as a result, the asteroid, thus saving the Earth… obviously.

But when the plan doesn’t work, Porky instructs Daffy to go crazy…

Daffy’s superhuman levels of looney-ness causes stalactite crystals to fall and "chew" the gum. But as they go to escape, the asteroid exploding all around them, Daffy gets stuck, and Porky, his devoted brother, refuses to leave his side. The two are presumed dead as the asteroid explodes before hitting Earth…

But then everything works out, and everyone lives happily ever after.

Except for Mrs. Grecht, the evil Karen and President of the local HOA, who is so mad at how her own evil plans were foiled that her head explodes and she dies as a result, presumably, which is great, because she sucks. Also Farmer Jim is actually some kind of god, if not THE God, and he approves of all of this.

The End

The Day the Earth Blew Up is Pete Browngardt‘s feature directorial debut, with nearly a dozen different people credited with writing the screenplay. It is the first fully animated, theatrically released Looney Tunes franchise film that consists of entirely original material, which is a crazy thing to realize. There hasn’t ever been a full length, fully-animated, original material Looney Tunes feature film?

Weird…

I didn’t realize that.

Anyway, while I wasn’t so hot on some of the more “Ren and Stimpy animation style” influences that pepper this film, most of which appear whenever Farmer Jim does, I really enjoyed this film.

Although, it does feel a little odd that this is a Daffy Duck/Porky Pig film, who seem like an unusual pair as far as Looney Tunes team-ups go. It also feels a little strange that Bugs Bunny never shows up.

But those weren’t deal-breakers for me.

Those are things you only notice before the film starts, and after the film is over, respectively. I didn’t think about them at all during the film. Honestly, Porky as the exasperated older brother to Daffy’s impulsive younger sibling gives them an easily understandable relationship, as well nice character arcs too, all while the story still allows them to be the chaotic, absurd figures we know and love. Overall, it’s a nice story and tonal balance for what is basically just a longer-than-usual Looney Tunes cartoon. Plus, I appreciate how the film makes a few somewhat subtle alien probe jokes, and also acknowledges how Daffy is a male duck who can lays eggs. There’s some nice references to some scary sci-fi classics too, like The Thing, and Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and the Alien franchise.

That’s all good stuff.

That said, why would you make an alien invasion Looney Tunes movie, and then not use Marvin the Martian? I don’t understand that at all. Also, the longer-than-usual length does mean that the film has a few down moments, and loses a bit of steam partway through.

But for the most part... it‘s quick, it’s fun, and it’s genuinely funny too, and really, what else are you looking for from a Porky Pig and Daffy Duck movie? This is a good time. Definitely worth checking out.

Th-Th-The, Th-Th-The, Th-Th... That's all, folks!