Review: 'The Day the Earth Blew Up' brings back two of the Looney Tunes stars for a feature-length exercise in comic craziness

It’s odd to realize that the Looney Tunes gang — the manic cartoon characters who became synonymous with the name “Warner Bros.” — has never starred in a fully animated feature-length movie before this new one, “The Day the Earth Blew Up.” 

Then you watch the movie, which is packed to the gills with inventive gags and features two of the troupe’s most engaging characters, and see that sustaining the Looney Tunes’ antics for 90 minutes isn’t as easy as it looks.

The movie tells us the origin story of Porky Pig and Daffy Duck, brothers from another species who are raised from babyhood by kindly Farmer Jim. (Porky and Daffy are both voiced by Eric Bauza, the current holder of Mel Blanc’s title as the man of many voices.) They live together in the house Farmer Jim left them, which has become a neighborhood eyesore — and is in even worse shape after an apparent meteorite tore through the roof before landing just out of town.

An astronomer spots that meteorite and follows it to its crash site, and realizes that it’s not a meteorite but a UFO. Before he can alert the authorities, the green goo from the UFO turns him into a zombie, tasked with spreading the brain-altering goo to the rest of the population. The vehicle for that alien invasion is the town’s gum factory — where Porky and Daffy just landed menial jobs.

The plot, of which there’s just a little too much, kicks into gear when Daffy convinces Porky that there’s something sinister about the factory’s new gum flavor. They enlist the help of the factory’s renegade flavor scientist, Petunia Pig (voiced by Candi Milo), who didn’t like the new gum flavor anyway. The three find themselves going up against an alien, known only as the Invader (voiced by Peter MacNicol), who says he’s out for Earth’s most precious resource. (No spoilers on what that is.)

Director Peter Browngardt and the 11 writers credited with the screenplay clearly love the old Looney Tunes characters and vibe, and largely succeed in translating that classic feel to a new audience. The movie opts to show Daffy in his more manic phase — the live wire of Robert Clampett’s shorts, rather than the cynical con artist of the Chuck Jones era — to match Porky’s nervous energy. (One Easter egg comes when Porky and Daffy eat at a diner named after Clampett, and the waitress is voiced by Clampett’s daughter, Ruth.)

It’s notable that while Warner Bros. Animation made “The Day the Earth Blew Up,” Warner Bros. Pictures — who shelved the already completed “Coyote vs. Acme” as a write-off — turned over distribution to a smaller company, Ketchup Entertainment. It’s another sad sign that the corporate overlords at Warner Bros. have no love for the movies.

The movie’s length exposes a paradox: The plot requires passages where the action slows down and the audience can take a break from that manic energy — but it’s that mania that makes the Looney Tunes who and what they are, so those slower moments expose the cracks in the facade. When the Looney Tunes can create perfect narratives in 8 minutes, taking 90 minutes feels like an unnecessary luxury, no matter how many jokes they can cram into that space..

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‘The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie’

★★★

Opens Friday, March 14, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG for cartoon violence/action and rude/suggestive humor. Running time: 91 minutes.