LOONEY TUNES: BACK IN ACTION A film review by David N. Butterworth Copyright 2003 David N. Butterworth
*1/2 (out of ****)
For pretty much the duration of the new "Looney Tunes" movie I found myself sitting there looking, I suppose, not unlike a cartoon character, my slack-jawed mouth agape in astonishment, eyes spinning like wagon wheels, stupefied by what
I was witnessing up there on the screen. How could this movie, one that looked so promising from its coming attractions teaser, be so colossally awful, so infantile, so amazingly brain dead?
"Looney Tunes: Back in Action," an animated/live action hybrid in that "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" vein (closer to Warner's own "Space Jam" in fact--name actors interacting with such well-inked thespians as Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck), stutters along like Porky Pig, only worse.
The blame would appear to rest with director Joe Dante, back in action after 1998's "Small Soldiers." He's handled similarly themed material before (namely the third segment of "The Twilight Zone" movie), and has a genuine fondness for movie nostalgia--he likes to give director Roger Corman and Corman regular Dick Miller cameos, for instance. But this isn't a reverential piece. It's a manipulative, uninspired, and incredibly unfunny piece, dragged down by a Larry Doyle ("Duplex") script that wobbles precariously from Las Vegas to Paris to Africa, with a coveted Blue Monkey Diamond at its epicenter. The "live" performers (I realize it's a stretch to refer to them as such), pretty much cartoon characters to begin with (Brendan Fraser, Jenna Elfman, Steve Martin, Joan Cusack, and Timothy Dalton playing a caricature of his former Bond self), all seem to mirror that wide-eyed sense of shock and bemusement I had.
Sure, I'm watching this sorry mess but they're all *in* it!
Martin is the best of the bunch, cavorting around as the freakish, Crispin Glover-like head honcho of the ACME Corporation--matted hair, undersized suit, spooky specs, with an exaggerated stance and equally affected delivery. Martin's despotic Mr. Chairman is at least trying to capture something here. The rest of the cast is just plain trying. And what's with that semi-famous rabble of VPs who barely utter so much as a line between them? Cue the director's cut.
Remember the scene in "Roger Rabbit," where Bob Hoskins' character desperately tries to hide Roger (who's handcuffed to his wrist) from the weasels by submerging him in the kitchen sink? You really felt the human/'toon interactions in that scene, with Hoskins struggling to keep a thrashing Roger underwater while soapy dishwater flies hither and thither. You don't get that same feeling in "Looney Tunes." Fraser and Elfman (and others) grapple with the likes of Daffy and Bugs (and Heather Locklear!) but you never feel they're in the same room, on the same playing field. They hold out their hands while some hapless 'toon dangles from the neck, wobbling in and out of the grip of their human counterparts who feverishly attempt (but mostly fail) to make eye contact.
It almost seems as though this blended style of filmmaking has taken a step backwards, not forwards. The main problem with "Looney Tunes: Back in Action" isn't technical, however. That honor goes to its over-direction. Dante blows his protagonists up and then, the minute they come to, drops an anvil on them. And then drops a safe on them. And then drops a piano on them. Figuratively speaking, of course.
"Looney Tunes: Back in Action" isn't fun or creative or even irreverent. It's simply frenetic. Saddest of all, it displays little affection for its carnival of animated heroes, from Yosemite Sam, Sylvester and Tweety Bird, and Wile E. Coyote, to Foghorn Leghorn, the Tazmanian Devil, and Elmer Fudd.
Like the man says, "Th-th-that's all, f-f-folks!"
-- David N. Butterworth dnb@dca.net
Got beef? Visit "La Movie Boeuf" online at http://members.dca.net/dnb
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