Porky and Daffy are back: A fun, new Looney Tunes movie is in theaters—and nobody seems to care

By Bob Grimm

There’s a new Looney Tunes movie playing in theaters. There’s a good chance you didn’t know that. 

The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie is the first fully animated, original Looney Tunes movie to get a theatrical release. It’s true! The other theatrical releases were either compilations of prior cartoons, or live-action/animated mixes like Space Jam. 

So, there you go: A full-blown animated Looney Tunes movie starring Porky Pig and Daffy Duck (the crazed, classic version of Daffy Duck) is playing on the big screen. Of course, virtually no one is going to see it. 

The set up is a little wacko: Porky and Daffy go up against alien forces who have polluted a popular bubble-gum brand with a mind-altering drug that turns the world’s population into zombies. Daffy, an unapologetic conspiracy theorist, is the only one who knows the truth, and it’s up to him to convince the world that the gum is dangerous. It’s all very silly, in a welcome sort of way. 

The film looks great, with old-school-style animation that captures the classic Looney vibes. Porky and Daffy are always a solid screen pairing, and the approach here actually feels a little like classic Ren and Stimpy at times. The film is rated PG, and the humor ranges from juvenile fart jokes to downright sneaky, surprisingly vulgar adult humor. 

The pacing is frantic, perhaps to a point where it becomes a little much and tedious in stretches. The patches where the film flattens out a bit are always rescued by a funny sight gag or an effective plot twist. It’s an overall good time, a cartoon parents will enjoy as much as kids. Fans of Looney Tunes won’t be let down.

I sat in a virtually empty theater on a Sunday afternoon, although there were a couple of young kids in the back row who laughed uproariously whenever somebody farted or there was a cartoon butt on the screen.

Originally intended for streaming on Max without a theatrical release, the film was sold to a different distributor by Warner Bros. during their recent shakeup. The movie probably should’ve stayed on home screens. It’s fun to see it on a big screen, but the smallish new distributor didn’t have the resources to market the movie properly. It sort of snuck into theaters quietly, at a strange time of year.

It looks like Warner Bros. is faced with the same dilemma Disney faces in trying to make the Muppets a big deal again. There have been some new Looney Tunes cartoons on Max, and this film was an attempt to go a notch bigger, but the public simply doesn’t seem very excited. This comes after the infamous abandonment of some other Warner Bros. films, including the live-action/animated combo Coyote vs. Acme. That film is virtually completed but remains in limbo. It stars Will Forte and John Cena, and is said to be quite good, but it has been shelved as a tax write-off. Batgirl (which featured another Michael Keaton return as Batman) and a Scooby-Doo movie were also scrapped despite being near completion.

It’s a shame. Daffy, Porky, the Coyote and the Roadrunner—all cartoon legends—are not catching any breaks. Has anybody younger than 15 even heard of Bugs Bunny?

It’s not just Daffy and Porky suffering; movie theaters as a whole continue to slump. This is not shaping up to be a good year, with Marvel movies underperforming, and films like Snow White being released with negative buzz. The summer has some good-looking stuff lined up, but Hollywood will definitely be playing catch-up for a good part of this year.