I’m reasonably certain I have just seen the worst movie of 2025. I’m speaking of The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie.
I can honestly say I was excited about seeing the first fully-animated feature film from Warner Brothers (note that prior feature length projects like 1996’s Space Jam were partly live-action).
It’s hard to imagine it’s taken so long (95 years, for the record). For my money, Warner Brothers cranked out some of the funniest, craziest cartoons ever created.
Decades ago, Bugs Bunny, the “Oscar-winning Rabbit” was joined by Porky Pig, Daffy Duck, and a host of colorful sidekick characters like Yosemite Sam, Sylvester the Cat, Tweetie Pie, Marvin the Martian and Marvin’s trusty canine companion, K-9. It was quite an ensemble cast voiced by the incomparable Mel Blanc, who passed away in 1989.
Their loud, brash, over-the-top, Vaudevillian schtick made audiences laugh then, and now. The Warner Brothers Animation Department was formidable and legendary.
Understandably, expectations were sky high with the release of their first feature-length project. The title was a tongue in cheek reference to some classic 1950s-style science fiction movies like The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951). It hinted that the plot would involve UFOs and conspiracy theories and an alien threat to all mankind.
The movie begins with a flash-back origin story about Porky Pig and Daffy Duck as babies, being raised on a farm by a Paul Bunyon-type father figure whose parting words are about the importance of sticking together. They are left alone to live in the family home which incurs some extensive (and expensive) roof damage due to an incoming meteor the streaks down from the sky, bearing the ghastly, glowing green goo that all movie meteors contain.
The goo makes its way to a bubble gum plant where it is mixed into sticks of chewing gum that turn people into zombies. On one level, The Day the Earth Blew Up means to be a fun, sci-fi, horror flick spin-off.
The writers toss in a pinch of romance with the introduction of Petunia Pig, a scientist working at the chewing gum plant, developing new chewing gum flavors. When she is introduced in the film, she is sitting on a lunch counter stool with a sign advertising a slice of pie on the wall in the background. Daffy turns to the smitten, starry-eyed Porky and remarks “I bet you can’t wait to get a piece of that!” It’s cringe-worthy moment that you pray isn’t indicative of the rest of the script.
Fortunately, the double-entendre, not-for-kids comedy stops there, and the movie launches into dialog -- a lot of dialog -- which is to say, non-stop dialog. The characters never stop talking throughout this 91-minute movie, making it feel like an eternity. It’s a far cry from the classic Warner Brother cartoons which spent much of the time setting up and executing hilarious pratfalls and sight gags. Dialog was used sparingly and effectively.
One suspects that the writers of The Day the Earth Blew Up never took the time to screen or study the contents of the animation vault at the studio. It might have been helpful.
Without giving away too much, there are references to other classic movies like The Blob (1958) and Armageddon (1998). The borrowed story elements from those movies are boringly predictable, amounting to cut and paste scriptwriting.
Technically, the movie is a major disappointment. Unlike the bold, splashy, distinctive style of the classic Warner Brothers cartoons, the characters here are dumbed down and simplified. The movie looks like a cranked-out, low-budget Saturday morning cartoon offering. Also gone are the crazily exaggerated sound effects that made those cartoons so outrageously funny.
The Warner cartoons of the past had a badass attitude that appealed to young and old alike. I remember watching them as a kid with my parents and laughing as much as they did. They were genuinely funny, and they stood the time test and repeated viewings over the years.
It’s crushingly sad to see a beloved movie franchise implode right before your eyes. But that’s what happens in The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie. Put simply, it fails to be looney (which was an apt name for this brand of cartoon entertainment back when it was launched). Looniness is what we loved about Looney Tunes.
Worth noting here is that distribution rights were acquired by Ketchup Entertainment, making it the first Looney Tunes production not distributed domestically by Warner Bros. Pictures. That says a lot.
At the very end of the film, as in the end of all the Warner Brothers cartoons, Porky pops into the frame and stutters his signature closing line, “The THE-a, the T’HE-a, that’s all folks!” But then Daffy pops in adds that he hopes there will be a sequel. I hate to break the news that will probably never happen. They may have saved the earth but blew up a beloved franchise in the process.
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