Because the
Disney animated properties suck up so much oxygen, between their original
creations and their
purchasing of The Muppets, that tends to suffocate another valuable set of
beloved cartoons – Looney Tunes. I oftentimes forget how much I enjoyed the
classic cartoons, which were a staple of my Saturday mornings growing up.
I also had a
bunch of the VHS collections of Looney Tunes, so, it was only appropriate that
I watched Looney Tunes: Back in Action on
tape, thanks to Karen scooping it up at some point from your old video store
job. (Side note: I’m incredibly envious of her, because I applied to
Blockbuster like a dozen times in my teens and early 20s, and never got the
call. I just wasn’t Blockbuster material.)
It’s a funny
but odd movie, in that it would have been much improved if the two human leads,
Brendan Fraser and Jenna Elfman, weren’t involved. They kind of just gum up the
works, and distract at times from what is otherwise strong, meta-based comedy
about Hollywood and classic animation. It’s basically like the opposite of Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
The basic
plot of the movie is that Daffy Duck feels unappreciated when it comes to his
role at Warner Bros., and he needs to be mollified. This, however, spirals into
a weird plot with a security guard / wannabe stuntman (Fraser) gets fired and
then finds out that his dad is actually a secret agent. He and a clueless
studio executive (Elfman) that fired Daffy then have to continue the secret
agent’s work and save the world from the evil president of the Acme Corporation
(Steve Martin!), who has a device that’ll turn all humans into monkeys.
Director Joe
Dante and screenwriter Larry Doyle are clearly fans of the ole Looney Tunes
gang, since they manage to cram pretty much every prominent character into the
film for at least a cameo, and even some not-so-prominent characters like the
dodo bird. However, according to Wikipedia, the
production was a nightmare thanks to executive
meddling, since they wanted things like Bugs Bunny rapping.
After
finishing this the other night, I circled back to some other Looney Tunes
content on YouTube and other places, and I was surprised at how well it held
up. The further you can go back, the better, since there was definitely a
fallow period. For the good stuff, check out this
list. For me, I’ve always been most partial to “The Rabbit of Seville.”
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