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Looney Tunes: Back in Action Movie Review

Looney Tunes: Back in Action is a 2003 live-action/animated comedy film directed by Joe Dante and starring Brendan Fraser and the titular characters. It’s quite underrated.

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“There is a DUCK in the middle of the picture.

Remove the DUCK“

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When DJ Drake’s movie star father, who is a spy in real life, gets kidnapped, the Looney Tunes come to life to help Drake in order to track his father. This movie came out some seven years after the original ‘Space Jam’, and it’s not at all a sequel to that movie. It is very much its own thing, and thus I enjoyed it significantly more.

This is what I’d expected from the aforementioned movie and I never got that. This flick treats its classic cartoon characters with respect and it gives them a lot more screen time to shine properly. And it also seemed very faithful to the said characters in design and humor altogether.

The plot itself isn’t the best, obviously. Yes, the spy elements are definitely enjoyable, much more than the sports storyline in the other movie, but overall the film did not feel authentic or memorable in any of its plot points. The dialogue and humor are strong, but the storytelling isn’t its best suit.

With that being said, I really liked most of the characters here, even including the humans. Jenna Elfman is quite memorable as Kate while Brendan Fraser is surprisingly fun and likable as Drake. These are professional actors and it shows, making the film better acted and less amateurish in the process.

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But the Looney Tunes are the star characters this time around, and thank goodness for that. Bugs Bunny is fantastic. This is Bugs that we know and love – very smart, quick-witted and manipulative. He steals the show throughout. The same goes with Daffy. He has many of the movie’s funniest lies and both voices done by Joe Alaskey are almost exactly how they sounded back in the forties and fifties. Wow, was I impressed with this incredible voice acting.

Foghorn Leghorn got a couple of moments to be fun and funny, the same goes for Porky and Elmer, and Marvin the Martian was terrific. It was a fantastic choice to have that climactic third act set on Mars. This segment is the highlight of the movie as it was pure cartoon mayhem that I adore. I also liked some cameos with Scooby-Doo being the most memorable one, but thankfully these were short occurrences and not distracting at all. Other characters are okay, but needed more screen time.

Looney Tunes: Back in Action definitely has a very short runtime, but this way it goes smoothly and it’s mostly well paced, though sometimes a bit too frenetic. The mixing of the animated and live-action mediums worked once again, though it was hardly truly inspired. It worked at least and that is important. The humor in dialogue is surprisingly good and it made me laugh actually a couple of times, but too much action in the second half and a chaotic structure made the movie less appealing than it should have been.

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Looney Tunes: Back in Action is a very underrated movie that has its problems such as the overly frenetic pacing, too much action and a weak plot, but this is still so much better than both Space Jam movies in what it does right, which are the titular classic cartoon characters. Most of them are well developed, faithful to their roots in both design and behavior, and thus very funny. The humor and dialogue are surprisingly good while the voice acting is terrific.

My Rating – 3.5