Looney Tunes: Back in Action (2003) Review

 Looney Tunes: Back in Action (2003) 6/10

Hello everyone. Today, I’ll be revisiting another piece of my childhood: Looney Tunes: Back in Action was released on November 14, 2003 with the director Joe Dante. Now, I have more memories of the game than the actual movie, so watching this now was basically new to me. I’ll be frank with you guys, this movie is average at best, but I enjoyed the hell out of it. I haven’t had a good life like this in a long time. You just can’t go wrong with Looney Tunes. Let’s begin.

Our story follows Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, former security guard for Warner Bros Studio DJ Drake, and former CEO of Comedy Kate as they set off on an adventure to recover the Blue Monkey Diamond and put a stop to the evil President of ACME’s sinister plan to turn the world into monkeys. Along the way, our group will encounter a slew of other Looney Tunes characters that will stand in their way.

Please, don’t take this plot seriously. It’s Looney Tunes. This whole movie feels like huge fanservice to the people that enjoy Looney Tunes. They travel across the world, visiting Las Vegas, Area 52, Paris, and then some African jungle. This whole plot exists just for you to laugh at it, which I did. There’s also this whole “My father was a spy” thing and yeah, that happened. I was more interested in Bugs and Daffy doing their usual shenanigans. There’s a lot of Easter eggs in this. Batman, Doctor Who, shitty B movies from the black and white era of film, The Mummy, and a couple more stuff. Overall, the story is okay at best. I wish the writers went with the game’s plot than what we got here.

The acting for the movie is okay at best. You can tell the actors didn’t take this seriously and they just had a lot of fun with it. Brendan Frasher (DJ) was cool. I didn’t care for Jenna Elfman (Kate) and the main villain Mr Chairman (played by Steve Martin) was so over the top, I loved it. Joe Alaskey stole the show with his impression of Bugs and Daffy.

So the movie is this cross-fusion between live action and 2D animation (like Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Space Jam). Seeing the live action characters interact with the cartoons and vice versa was awesome to see and I wish this spectacle would come back with modern movies. I liked seeing the old school movie studio lot as it reminded me of a time where practical effects were still being used and everything felt more real. It's very rare to see a movie nowadays that doesn't constantly use 3D CGI. 

The music was pretty cool. Using the famous Looney Tunes theme and other similar tunes to set the mood for the movie, the film truly felt like it belonged in the Looney Tunes universe. All of the wacky sound effects helped support this too.

Overall, I enjoyed this movie a lot. It’s not the best, but it’ll definitely give you a good laugh. I highly recommend this for anyone that’s looking for a good comedy movie or just something to brighten your day. I will be revisiting the game in the future, but for now, I’ll let this rest.

Thanks for reading and I’ll see you next time.

This is Zorgak, signing off.