The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie

In this animated sci-fi comedy, Daffy Duck and Porky Pig discover a secret alien plot to take over Earth using mind-control bubblegum. The duo must work together, with the help of Petunia Pig, to stop the aliens while trying not to drive each other crazy.

The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie Review

The Day the Earth Blew Up continues Warner Bros’s almost 30-year trend of churning out poorly conceived Looney Tunes properties, with the last ounce of freshness and quality ending in 1998 with the cancellation of Animaniacs. Since then, the house that Batman built has given fans of the one-time pinnacle of cartoon comedy, one lazy disappointment after another.

                   

While they have appeared together in numerous shorts (the last of which was in 2003’s short-run Duck Dodgers series), Daffy Duck and Porky Pig have never led a feature-length film until now. Unfortunately, The Day the Earth Blew Up is not a Looney Tunes movie about which either should be proud. Instead, it’s a bore that relies almost entirely on ever-increasing volume to compensate for its weaknesses, making it one of the longest 91 minutes of anyone’s life.

Uninspired and derivative, it pays lazy homage to classic Looney Tunes gags, wielding them with less competence than Wile E. Coyote strapped to an Acme rocket as it bounces its way from one scene to the next with only the most superficial causal narrative.

This is one film that the youngest of children might enjoy because of its bright colors and loud noises, but parents should plan to snooze through.

INNAPROPRIATE ELEMENTS

Tig Ol Bitties

• The original Looney Tunes cartoons were indeed no stranger to making Bugs Bunny a busty crossdresser from time to time to entice and then brutalize one of his myriad of foes. However, The Day the Earth Blew Up takes it up to a triple D. One of the main secondary villains is a woman whose breasts are beyond huge (so big that she has trouble getting inside her car). While they are completely covered with no cleavage shown, and she is not supposed to be sexy or titillating (pun intended), one wonders why.
• There is a brief scene in which an obese and busty female character wears a very low-cut crop.
• Another scene shows a full-bodied woman in a tight tank top and short shorts that outline her butt crack.
• Yet another scene briefly shows another busty woman in a tight tank top.

Crack Kills

• This movie loves its butts.
  • Daffy bares his bear, featherless and very human-looking butt to the camera for several seconds.
  • Daffy inflates his now feather-covered but still very human posterior and spends about a minute aggressively twerking, sometimes shaking one cheek at a time.
  • Porky runs face-first into a large woman’s rump, planting his nose betwixt her cheeks. She, of course, is wearing form-fitting yoga pants.
  • Porky and Daffy make several “jokes” about getting probed by aliens.
    • “I hope you get probed.”
    • “You can probe us in truck stop restrooms.”

Ugly Dickling

• There is a scene in which Daffy takes the business end of a stalagmite straight to his crotch.

She’s My Cherry Pie

• Petunia’s character is introduced to Daffy and Porky in a diner. Porky is immediately smitten, which Daffy picks up on but misinterprets. She sits across from them and adjacent to a piece of pie. So, Daffy starts asking him questions like, “I bet you’d like a piece of that.” and “I’ll slice you off a piece of that.”

Wicked Tongues

• The premise has people turned into zombie-like creatures after chewing gum infected by alien technology. The gum remains in their mouths but will come out as tendrils. In one scene, a zombie is trying to shove gum into Daffy’s mouth, which he blocks with his tongue. The result is that it looks like two tongues mashing together and someone forcing themselves on Daffy. Daffy then says, “I barely even know you”— drawing attention to the fact that it looks like a tongue kiss.

WOKE REPORT

Gilty?

• Some might argue that Petunia’s inclusion as a scientist while Porky and Daffy are functionally worthless screwups is woke. However, she’s just as big a mess as them, and neither Porky nor Daffy are portrayed as morons so much as victims of Daffy’s long-established lunacy. For that reason, and that the narrative is fairly balanced in its approach to both genders, with the men arguably coming out on top, I didn’t mark down the Woke-O-Meter.