The Day the Earth Blew Up (2024)

Alright, so this isn’t the post on Demolition Man (1993) that you may have been anticipating. To the true blue fans, I apologize, but today I just saw The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie (dir: Peter Browngardt, 2024) and just had to write about it. It seems like this movie just came out of nowhere; it is the very first fully animated Looney Tunes feature film to be released and its 2D animated at that. I’ve been thinking about this all day, but I think the last time I saw a 2D animated film in theaters was when I went to see The Simpsons Movie back in 2007. CG animated movies are the norm now, particularly western produced animated features, so something like this to release theatrically seems like an anomaly. There’s more to it with this release, but I will get to that in a little bit. Due to the movie’s small release, it was not playing in any theater in my immediate area, so I made a day trip “down the hill” and saw this movie at the AMC Dine-In 12 theater at the Montclair Place mall in (you guessed it) Montclair, California. Along the way, I went looking around and found a watch that I have had my eye on: the Casio G-Shock GW6900NASA241. It is a special NASA themed version of the GW6900-1, which I thought was coincidentally appropriate to wear to the theater. I initially just wanted the regular GW6900-1, but I found this watch at $30 off MSRP and decided to pick it up. 

As for the theater experience, the auditorium featured seats that had an extra level of recline not seen at the good old Victorville Cinemark, and I found that they operated more smoothly here than at the AMC Victoria Gardens in Rancho Cucamonga. I’d say the auditorium was decently packed given how little this movie seems to have been marketed. Given that animated films are often marketed to kids, you take a risk as an adult seeing them in theater as you never know if you’ll be able to enjoy the movie over crying kids that, in all honesty, are probably too young to remember the experience. That wasn’t the case for me here and I found the other groups in the auditorium a great audience to enjoy the movie with. People in my row were engaged and I often found myself laughing alongside them, which is always great when going to see a movie like this. Much of the trailers that played were for animated movies that I will likely never see. We got a new Smurfs movie that I have no nostalgic investment in and honestly looks like the kind of streaming fodder that Millennial and older Gen Z parents would put on for their kids to rot their brains to while the parents take a break and doomscroll, but I digress. Pixar apparently has a sci-fi adventure movie called Elio releasing in June, as Pixar movies often do. One thing that has kind of bothered me about newer Pixar movies (Turning Red and onwards) is the art style of their human characters (fucking Grub Hub commerical looking ahh humans). At any rate, I haven’t seen a Pixar movie since Soul (2020) so my misgivings probably don’t hold a lot of weight. Speaking of off-looking human characters, Sneaks (2025) is an upcoming CG animated movie that centers around sentient sneakers. The sneakers themselves and the environments look fine enough; it’s just that the human characters look a little stock to me. Plus (speaking cynically here) I feel this movie will be thinly veiled product placement to get a younger generation into collecting and speculating on articles of bare minimum clothing, but I’m also a “watch guy” so I guess that point is moot anyhow. Lastly we got, The King of Kings (2025). Not to be confused with Kevin James’ sitcom, it is a CG animated Christian film depicting their story of Jesus (voiced by Oscar Isaac I shit you not), as told by Charles Dickens to a small boy. In a day where the line between church and state doesn’t mean shit to a lot of people anymore, I tend to ignore content like this. However, it’s fascinating that this movie has alot of relatively big name actors from the live action and VA scene involved. I’ve already mentioned Oscar Isaac, but we also got Uma Thurman, Forest Whitaker, Mark Hamill, and fucking Pierce Brosnan as Pontius Pilate. I dunno it just tickles me to see a stacked cast for this movie. Anyhow, onto the Looney Tunes. 

The Day The Earth Blew Up is an animated sci-fi comedy starring (as the promotional material puts it) Porky Pig and Daffy Duck, both voiced by Eric Bauza. In this movie, Daffy and Porky are both raised as brothers by an ethereal man, named Farmer Jim (Fred Tatasciore) whose main mantra to the young animals was to “always stick together”. Years later, Porky and Daffy are living as roommates in a town unfortunately run by this world’s version of the HOA. After they fail a house inspection, the duo are forced to get jobs to come up with the money to pay for repairs to their home while also finding themselves to be the world’s only hope against an alien invasion. As I mentioned earlier, this movie seemed to have just come from nowhere; I haven’t seen any promotional material whatsoever. In addition, I thought this was a streaming only release when I first learned of the movie last week. Apparently, the movie was reported to be in development as early as 2021 and was originally set to be a streaming only release on HBO Max in 2022. However, as a result of the restructuring fuckery at the hands of the Warner Bros Discovery merger, the movie was in limbo and intended to be loaned out to other streaming services. Given WB Discovery and its CEO, David Zaslav’s, antagonistic attitude towards animated content, not to mention the permanent shelving of movies like Batgirl and Coyote vs Acme for tax purposes, I’m surprised this movie got to see the light of day. From what I read, Ketchup Entertainment (a US-based film production and distribution company), bought the US distribution rights so it can not only see a theatrical release, but also release on blu-ray in May. That was a lot of preamble, but I felt it was necessary context for this movie. 

 In terms of what hits for me in this movie, I’ll start with the animation. I think this movie looks fantastic! Porky and Daffy, as well as the other human and non-human characters, look great and fresh while also evoking a faithful depiction of the art style from the old cartoons. The visual humor is just top notch with every character featuring either exaggerated expressions, body contortions, or just details in how they move that give me the chuckles. The movie also blends in different animation styles for laughs as well as for setpieces, and I thought these moments were quite effective in bringing on The Funny while also being visually stunning. 

Speaking of The Funny, the laughs don't just stop at the visuals as the performances, provided by our cast of talented voice actors, deliver on the jokes too. I’ll give my roses to Eric Bauza as the voice of both Porky and Daffy. I didn’t realize the man was voicing two completely different characters until I looked up details later. I felt that both characters were portrayed with respect towards their incarnations from the old cartoons with some new tweaks to their personalities that I find welcome. It’s nice to see a Daffy that isn’t intentionally a self-serving and pompous loon. We get a duck that is caring and means well, but just happens to be insane. By the same token, I appreciate that Porky lets off a little more aggressive steam than usually depicted and I feel these changes serve this odd couple’s relationship in the story better. Candi Milo also does a great job as Petunia Pig, a flavor scientist and Porky’s love interest. I think she and Porky play off of each other really well and it’s great fun to see them in action together; I’m glad to see she wasn’t an afterthought. Honestly, for as fun and off the wall as these performances can be, I was surprised at how sweet and touching the emotional moments got. It sort of reminds me of the The Spongebob Squarepants Movie (2004) in that regard. Lastly, I’ll also give special mention to Peter MacNicol as the Alien Invader, specifically his evil laugh. It’s obviously hard to describe over text, but I find it fucking hysterical. 

Honestly, I don’t have many negative things to say about this movie. I guess I can say that there was one bit taking a jab at modern culture that felt a little forced for me, but it honestly was not too bad. There were quite a few gags like this, especially early on in the movie, but I found that almost all of them landed by giving the joke or gag with that zany and goofy Looney Tunes style. Moreover, while I really enjoyed the animation on display, I wish the backgrounds could be just a bit more detailed. In this kind of medium, I get a lot of enjoyment from seeing what jokes or funny details the artists put in the background while we’re supposed to be focused on the characters on-screen. While we do get some of this in locations like Daffy and Porky’s house, many other locations are just a bit more dull in comparison. I understand this was likely an unfortunate casualty of the movie’s production woes and budget, so this is more of a nitpick than anything. 

So yeah, I’m gonna give The Day the Earth Blew Up a Best Movie Ever. This movie came as a welcome surprise and while I went into the theater thinking it would be pretty decent, I was shocked by how much I enjoyed it. I’m glad Ketchup Entertainment saved this movie from obscurity, and apparently they’re reportedly in talks to purchase the distribution rights to Coyote vs Acme. Hopefully that movie gets to see the light of day too. If you’re a fan, or have enjoyed Looney Tunes content in the past, then I would say that this is a must watch. Even if you’re just a fan of animation, I would implore you to go to the theater to watch this while you still can. It would be great to see more theatrically released 2D animated films, and while it’s unrealistic to think we can make this movie a smash hit, I would hope enough people watch it to convince WB and other western studios to consider. 

My next post is now probably going to be on Demolition Man, while the next new movie that I watch would likely be Black Bag (2025). I was in talks with friends to see Black Bag, but as soon as I learned that TDTEBU was in theaters, I suddenly became more interested in that. That’s my priorities for ya. Have a good night!