|
The action of Looney Tunes: Back in Action revolves around the search for the mythical Blue Monkey diamond, which is wanted by the greedy ACME Corporation, led by a deranged and OTT Chairman (Steve Martin). A Warner Brothers studio security guard (Brendan Fraser) sets off with Daffy Duck to find the diamond, and they are soon joined by a Warner Brothers executive (Jenna Elfman) and Bugs Bunny. Their quest takes them around the world, where they meet various Looney Tunes characters, assorted humans and even aliens from classic sci-fi movies and TV shows. While Looney Tunes: Back in Action is packed with great ideas and sequences, it’s ultimately never quite as memorable or amusing as it should be. While it’s great to see the Looney Tunes characters back in action, the humans in the film are a little too bland. Fraser and Elfman essentially play ‘straight men’ to their outrageous animated co-stars and aren’t too bad, but others in the cast are wasted, particularly Timothy Dalton as Fraser’s secret agent dad, and Martin’s Chairman, whose buffoonery is more tiresome that amusing - except for the moment when he tries to fathom which of the many remote controls in his boardroom operates his giant video screen, a dilemma which many home cinema aficionados can relate to. Anyone familiar with specific Looney Tunes gags or cartoons will recognise some classic bits of business that Dante references in the film, including Daffy Duck’s memorable outer space adventure Duck Dodgers in the 24th ½th Century (1956). As for the new jokes, the stand out scene is surely the moment when, after the main characters arrive in Paris, Elmer Fudd pursues Bugs and Daffy through the Louvre, with the animated characters diving into a series of classic paintings and leaving chaos in their wake. This all too brief scene is a perfect blend of inspired Looney Tunes madness and the fantastic visual imagination of Dante, and you‘re left wishing that more of the film contained the wild inventiveness of this brief scene. Despite numerous movie
parodies and in-jokes made at the expense of the contemporary Hollywood
film industry, Looney Tunes: Back in Action feels like Dante’s most
commercial project yet, a film that’s more of a gently mocking bark than
viciously subversive bite. It could be argued that Dante may have
been under enormous studio pressure to make a more conventional family
film, but Looney Tunes: Back in Action is actually more of a celebration
of the Looney Tunes cartoons and classic movies than a blistering critique
of Hollywood, which makes Dante’s less cynical approach to the material
understandable. It’s obvious that Dante, an unabashed movie lover,
relishes the opportunity to bring the Looney Tunes characters back to the
big screen, and enjoys loading the film with movie in-jokes and cameos
from a variety of Hollywood artists. While the resulting film may
be a hit and miss affair, it’s always a pleasure when a filmmaker and movie
fan like Dante shares his passion and enthusiasm for movies, and movie
history, with an audience.
|
