Warner Bros. is in a rough position... understatement of the year I know, but y'know.. hindsight and peaks and valleys and all that... The point is Warner Bros. is not in a good place as of now, and it is very likely that the ramifications of said not good place are very likely to reveal their ugly heads soon. Whether that is another, much larger strike, the dissolution of one of the most important studios in film history, or the complete collapse of the Hollywood system... Well I've put money on stupider bets, but it remains to be uncertain, though each outcome is equally likely. I bring this up because, people are saying that the big animation studios are gonna crumble, you know Disney, Warner Bros, and all that stuff, or at least people are thinking that is what will happen, and all I have to say is... no. If Disney was going to crumble, they would have crumbled during their disastrous era in the nineties and early two-thousands, which involved failed theme parks, box office flops, and lots of bad business decisions. Disney is not going to crumble because of a couple movies that we're mediocre are worst. However, Warner Bros is a different story, because it is looking pretty bad over there, because while Disney's current lull is not as bad as their Post-Death, Pre-Renaissance era was, this is looking worse for Warner Bros than their post Quest For Camelot era, where they straight up lost faith in all their upcoming animated releases... which included The Iron Giant and Looney Tunes: Back in Action.
All of that build-up to such a minor reveal. Almost like a real journalist. Anyway, I needed another movie to fill in this week, because I have an editorial that will follow my next movie review, so for this week I chose to review another movie from my childhood, it also let me rant about the response to this valley for Disney and Warner Bros, so, I win.
The story is... zany. Describing almost feels like a Herculean task because it's just so wild and ridiculous. After Daffy Duck gets let go from Warner Bros. he causes some ruckus that gets a security guard named D.J. Drake fired as well, which is unfortunate because D.J. is the son of the studio's most beloved star, Damian Drake, who has appeared in several spy movies. It also just so happens that Drake is in fact, a super spy and is on a mission to recover a supernatural diamond called "The Blue Monkey", but he gets captured, and must entrust the mission to his son, D.J. and Daffy tags along because he heard the word diamond and thinks he'll get rich, while Bugs and a WB Executive are after them to get Daffy back. Honestly... this plot is inane, ridiculous, asinine, and other synonyms. I kind of love it, it is a little bit too ridiculous for what I would imagine to be a Looney Tunes movie plot, I think somewhere between Space Jam and Back in Action is the level of ridiculous I'd like for a Looney Tunes movie. That being said, the plot gives us some fascinating locations, unique scenes and some pretty alright gags. It's pretty clear that at some point, they stopped taking this movie seriously as a movie and took it seriously as a vehicle for gags and jokes. It's ridiculous, but I can't help but love it.
I don't think the characters are all that great, I mean, the live-action characters are passable, but they're mostly saved by their casting. Brendan Frasier smiles like a Looney Tunes character, and Jenna Elfman is pretty good at being the frigid and more grounded in reality character. I love Steve Martin, but I think the role was written more for a Jim Carrey type performer, someone who has much more fluid movement, Steve Martin just looks very stiff with his movements, which I guess is a joke in and of itself, but I dunno, I think you could have given this role to Jim Carrey and it would have been a lot funnier. One place I can give credit to the casting for is the smaller roles, Timothy Dalton as the Super Spy? Come on, that's just an amazing casting gag, and Peter Graves cameos in a secret mission instructional video. Goldberg as a secret agent henchman is great, and the Acme VP members are all filled with "if you know, you know" kind of names like Bill McKinney, George Murdock, Ron Perlman, and Robert Picardo.
I also must give credit to the voice actors. Joe Alaskey is probably my second favourite Bugs Bunny, behind Mel Blanc (I should do a blog about that), and Jeff Bennett is a great performer for Foghorn Leghorn and Yosemite Sam. Of course, Billy West and June Foray are wonderful as always, two of my favourite voice actors right there, and Casey Kasem and Frank Welker cameoing as Shaggy and Scooby-Doo respectively is always welcome. Some archive recordings were also used, for the most part it's minor. I think the casting is very well done here, and the cameos from some lesser known Looney Tunes characters like Nasty Canasta and Marc Antony and Pussyfoot are really nice. I do wish Blacque Jacque Shellacque cameoed, but that's really about it.
I think the animation is a mixed-bag. On one hand, the actual animation is not terrible, the characters move fluid and look solid enough. The problem comes in with the live-action mixing, and not just the actual integration, though honestly it's pretty fine, like I can believe these characters are part of this world, until I see them interacting with other characters. When a live actor has to hold, attack or physically interact with a cartoon character in any way, it often looks phony, and does pull me out of this illusion. Roger Rabbit worked because they took several steps in order to make sure the cartoons were believably interacting with the live actors, and Space Jam had the live actors predominately in the cartoon world, so it had less blending to do than this movie. It also doesn't help that some of the CG has visibly aged rather poorly. I think to mask a lot of this, the editing is much faster paced than a typical Looney Tunes short, and that does this movie zero favors. Slapstick really works best when you can feel the impact of each hit, and if you cut away as soon as the impact is made, it just doesn't land as well. Looney Tunes shorts worked best because they were a lot more cleverly written than other shorts of the era, and that clever writing also lends itself best to slower paced editing.
However, I think the major saving grace of this movie is the humour, and I don't mean the big jokes or the slapstick, a lot of those are alright, but a lot of the background jokes had me howling with laughter. Everyone brings up Mathew Lillard talking to Shaggy about his portrayal in the live-action Scooby-Doo movie, but in the same scene, seeing Sam Sheepdog and Ralph Wolf do their routine in the background, or seeing Michigan J. Frog just be randomly carried away are really good gags. Bugs and Daffy exchanging last will and testaments during a car chase was a fantastic gag. I also loved a lot of the fourth-wall breaks and seeing the references in Area-52 was just fantastic for my little movie loving heart, Robot Monster, Forbidden Planet, Invasion of the Body Snatchers with Kevin McCarthy reprising his role for a brief cameo as well. To be fair, some of the bigger more prominent jokes and gags were kind of funny too. I don't think I'll ever get tired of the lit match in the room full of explosives gag, it's a well-worn bit, but I love it.
The term "Guilty Pleasure" has a very loose and undefined meaning. Is it something you like in spite of, or even sometimes because of, the flaws? Is it something you wouldn't normally admit to enjoying, but love anyway? I think Looney Tunes: Back in Action is kind of a guilty pleasure for me, in that "Shut your brain off and enjoy the ride" type of enjoyment. It's a dumb, ridiculous and inane mess, I'd almost call it a farce, but I'm not always best with genre. I think if you're my age and you grew up with this movie, you'll have some fondness for it, not like a Treasure Planet level masterpiece that was unappreciated in its time, but as a movie that's good for some dumb laughs. This might be my favourite of the Looney Tunes movies, which... kind of says more about the rest of the movies than it does this one. Do I recommend it? Yeah, I guess. It's hard to really recommend this as a hidden gem or an unfairly slept on movie, but at the same time, I do think it's an entertaining flick, and if you can tolerate an inane plot, there may be some enjoyment in this film.
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