Looney Tunes: Back in Action

This article is about the film. For the tie-in video game, see Looney Tunes: Back in Action (video game).
Looney Tunes: Back in Action

Theatrical release poster
Directed by Joe Dante[1]
Produced by
Written by Larry Doyle
Starring
Music by Jerry Goldsmith
Cinematography Dean Cundey
Edited by
  • Rick Finney
  • Marshall Harvey
Production
company
  • Baltimore Spring Creek Productions
  • Goldmann Pictures
  • Lonely Film Productions GmbH & Co. KG.
  • Warner Bros. Animation
Distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures
Release dates
  • November 9, 2003 (2003-11-09) (premiere)
  • November 14, 2003 (2003-11-14) (United States)
Running time
 93 minutes[2]
Country United States
Language English
Budget $80 million[2]
Box office $68.5 million[2]

Looney Tunes: Back in Action is a 2003 American live action/animated adventure family comedy film produced by Paula Weinstein, Bernie Goldman, Lonely Film Productions GmbH & Co. KG., Goldmann Pictures and Baltimore Spring Creek Productions, distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures, directed by Joe Dante, written by Larry Doyle with music by Jerry Goldsmith and John Debney and starring Brendan Fraser, Jenna Elfman and Steve Martin. It is the second live-action feature-length film starring the Looney Tunes characters, the first being Space Jam (1996). This was the final film that composer Jerry Goldsmith created music for. It premiered on November 9, 2003, and was theatrically released on November 14, 2003. The film grossed $68.5 million against its $80 million budget. It was released on DVD in separate widescreen and full screen editions on September 7, 2010, and was released on Blu-ray with bonus features on December 2, 2014.

Plot

Tired of playing second fiddle to Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck demands his own movie from the Warner Bros., but they promptly fire him. Aspiring stuntman DJ Drake is asked to escort Daffy off the studio lot, but the ensuing chase leads to the Batmobile demolishing the studio water tower. DJ is fired, and returns home with Daffy hitching a ride, discovering his father and action star Damian Drake is actually a secret agent. Damian instructs his son to travel to Las Vegas, find his associate Dusty Tails, and gain the mystical Blue Monkey diamond before being captured by the Acme Corporation, led by the childish Mr. Chairman. DJ and Daffy head for Vegas. Meanwhile, Bugs' routines fall apart without Daffy, so V.P. for Comedy, Kate Houghton, is sent to rehire Daffy or face being fired herself. Bugs informs Kate of the situation and they pursue DJ and Daffy in Damian's spy car.

In Las Vegas, DJ and Daffy meet Dusty in a casino owned by Acme operative Yosemite Sam. Dusty gives them a strange playing card, but when Yosemite tries to kill them, they flee in the spy car with Bugs and Kate and when Daffy cries "Mother!", the car takes flight. Crashing in Death Valley, the group stumble across the secretive Area 52, run by Damian's gadget specialist Mother. Mother plays a video recording, revealing Acme intends on using the Blue Monkey to transform mankind into monkeys to manufacture their products and then buy them as humans. Marvin the Martian, imprisoned in the facility, escapes and leads a group of fellow alien inmates to obtain the playing card but the heroes escape. Seeing that the card has Mona Lisa's face on it, the group conclude they must view the painting in the Louvre, Paris.

At the Louvre, they discover that the card contains a viewing window and looking through it reveals the Mona Lisa has a map of Africa hidden beneath it. Elmer Fudd appears, revealing he is "secretly evil", and chases Bugs and Daffy through the gallery for the card whilst Kate is kidnapped by Mr. Chairman's bodyguard Mr. Smith to obtain a photo of the African map though DJ rescues her. Elmer is disintegrated by Bugs after jumping out of a pointillism artwork. Bugs and Daffy reunite with DJ and Kate, and they leave Paris.

DJ, Kate, Bugs, and Daffy travel to Africa, meeting Granny, Sylvester, and Tweety, who escort them to the ruins of a jungle temple where they find the Blue Monkey. Granny and co. reveal themselves to be Mr. Chairman, Smith, and the Tasmanian Devil in disguise. Mr. Chairman uses a disintegration gun to transport himself and the heroes to the Acme headquarters where he forces DJ to give him the diamond when Damian is revealed to be his prisoner.

Marvin is sent to place the Blue Monkey on an Acme satellite which will emit an energy beam around the world to turn everyone, save Mr. Chairman, into monkeys. DJ and Kate rescue Damian from a death trap, whilst Bugs and Daffy pursue Marvin. Bugs is incapacitated, prompting Daffy to become Duck Dodgers, removes his beak and uses it to destroy the Blue Monkey. The transforming energy beam only strikes Mr. Chairman, turning him into a monkey.

Bugs and Daffy return to Earth, where Daffy discovers the whole adventure was staged to make a movie. However, Bugs promises Daffy they will be equal partners, but just as Daffy's luck seems to be improving, he is flattened by the Looney Tunes' iris, where Porky Pig tries to close the film with "That's all folks!" only for the studio to shut down before he can finish and he tells the audience to go home.

Cast

Voices

Production

A follow-up to Space Jam was planned as early as the film's release. As development began, Space Jam 2 was going to involve a new basketball competition between the Looney Tunes and a new villain named Berserk-O!. Artist Bob Camp was tasked with designing Berserk-O! and his henchmen. Joe Pytka would have returned to direct and Spike Brandt and Tony Cervone signed on as the animation supervisors. However, Michael Jordan did not agree to star in a sequel. A producer lied to design artists, claiming that Jordan did sign on in order to keep development going. Warner Bros. eventually canceled plans for Space Jam 2.[5]

The film then re-entered development as Spy Jam and was to star Jackie Chan. Chan later resigned and the production was delayed numerous times. Warner Bros. then asked Joe Dante to direct the film, having had previous success with Gremlins (1984) and Innerspace (1987). Early in the 1990s, Dante wanted to produce a biographical comedy with HBO, called Termite Terrace. It centered around director Chuck Jones' early years at Warner Bros. in the 1930s. On the project, Dante recalled "It was a hilarious story and it was very good except that Warner Bros. said 'Look, it’s an old story. It’s got period stuff in it. We don’t want that. We want to rebrand our characters and we want to do Space Jam.'"[6]

Years later when Warner Bros. offered Back in Action to him, Dante agreed to direct as tribute to Chuck Jones. He and screenwriter Larry Doyle conceived the film as the "Anti-Space Jam" as he had hated how that film represented the Looney Tunes brand and personalities and decided to poke fun at the studio system that put Space Jam into production. Dante said "I was making a movie for them with those characters and they did not want to know about those characters. They didn't want to know why Bugs Bunny shouldn't do hip-hop. It was a pretty grim experience all around." Warner Bros. hired Walt Disney Feature Animation's Eric Goldberg, most known for his fast-paced, Warner Bros.-inspired animation of the Genie in Aladdin (1992), to direct the animation.

On the film, Dante stated "It's a gagfest. Not having a particularly strong story, it just goes from gag to gag and location to location. It's not a particularly compelling narrative, but, of course, that's not where the charm of the movie is supposed to lie." On the subject of filming, Dante said "We would shoot each scene three times. First we'd rehearse with a stand-in—a 'stuffy,' we called it. Then, we'd shoot the scene without anything in it; then, we'd shoot the scene again with this mirror ball in the shot which shows the computers where the light sources are. Then the animators would go to work and put characters into the frame. The problem with that movie came when the studio [executives] started to get tired of our jokes and wanted us to change them. But, of course, the animation is done to the voices and not the other way around. It was difficult trying to convince them that you don't just bring in 25 gag writers and try to write a joke that's short enough to put in somebody's mouth." Although the production had 25 gag writers, the film has only one credited writer.[7]

Despite being directed by acknowledged fans of the original cartoons, Dante stated that he had no creative freedom on the project, and called it "the longest year and a half of my life." Dante felt that he and Goldberg managed to preserve the original personalities of the characters. However, the opening, middle, and end of the film are different from what Dante envisioned.[8]

Goldberg provided the voices of Tweety, Marvin the Martian and Speedy Gonzales. Brendan Fraser provided the voice of the Tazmanian Devil, having impressed Dante with his vocal impression.

Soundtrack

This was the final film legendary composer Jerry Goldsmith created music for. Due to Goldsmith's failing health, the last reel of the film was actually scored by John Debney, though Goldsmith was the only credited composer in marketing materials and the Varèse Sarabande soundtrack album only contains Goldsmith's music (although the first and last cues are adaptations of compositions heard in Warner Bros. cartoons). Debney receives an "Additional Music by" credit in the closing titles of the film and "Special Thanks" in the soundtrack album credits.[9] Goldsmith died in July 2004, eight months after the film's release.

  1. Life Story – Carl Stalling (:18)
  2. What's Up? (1:24)
  3. Another Take (:48)
  4. Dead Duck Walking (3:13)
  5. Out of the Bag (3:42)
  6. Blue Monkey (:54)
  7. In Style (1:09)
  8. The Bad Guys (2:57)
  9. Car Trouble (3:45)
  10. Thin Air (1:24) (a version of the well known Powerhouse theme is heard)
  11. Area 52 (1:27)
  12. Hot Pursuit (2:26)
  13. We've Got Company (1:50)
  14. I'll Take That (1:19)
  15. Paris Street (1:21)
  16. Free Fall (1:15)
  17. Tasmanian Devil (1:10)
  18. Jungle Scene (1:40)
  19. Pressed Duck (3:22)
  20. Re-Assembled (:50)
  21. The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down (Cliff Friend and Dave Franklin) (:16)

Reception

Commercial reception

Looney Tunes: Back in Action was released on November 14, 2003, originally planned to open earlier that summer. With heavy competition and little promotion, the film grossed $68.5 million worldwide against a budget of $80 million.[10][11]

Warner Bros. was hoping to start a revitalized franchise of Looney Tunes media and products with the success of Back in Action. New animated shorts and a Duck Dodgers TV series were commissioned to tie-in with Back in Action. The film instead triggered Warner Bros. to attempt to re-brand the Looney Tunes in TV projects such as Loonatics Unleashed (2005–2007), The Looney Tunes Show (2011–2014), and Wabbit (2015).

Critical response

Critical response aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes gave the film an approval rating of 57% based on 134 reviews. The site's critical consensus reads: "The plot is a nonsensical, hyperactive jumble and the gags are relatively uninspired compared to the classic Looney Tunes cartoons."[12] At Metacritic, the film scored a 64/100, indicating "generally favorable reviews"[13] Chicago Sun-Times movie critics, Roger Ebert and Richard Roeper, gave the film "Two Thumbs Up"; Roeper called it a "cheerful and self-referential romp blending animation with live action in a non-stop quest for silly laughs," while Ebert called it "goofy fun."[14]

The film was also nominated for Saturn Award for Best Animated Film, Annie Award for Best Animated Feature and Satellite Award for Best Animated or Mixed Media Feature.

Home media release

Warner Home Video released Looney Tunes: Back in Action on VHS and DVD on March 2, 2004. The film was re-released on DVD in separate widescreen and full screen editions on September 7, 2010. It was also released on Blu-ray with bonus features on December 2, 2014.

References

  1. ↑ "Detail view of Movies Page". afi.com. Retrieved October 30, 2015.
  2. 1 2 3 "Looney Tunes: Back in Action (2003)". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved January 25, 2008.
  3. ↑ "Behind The Voice Actors - Voice Of Michigan J. Frog". Behind The Voice Actors. Retrieved October 30, 2015.
  4. ↑ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0318155/fullcredits?ref_=tt_cl_sm#cast
  5. ↑ "Artist Bob Camp recalls the ill-fated "Space Jam 2"". Animated Views. November 30, 2012. Retrieved 2014-06-18.
  6. ↑ "Joe Dante on Looney Tunes". Something Old, Nothing New. June 15, 2007. Retrieved 2014-06-18.
  7. ↑ Sachs, Ben (August 8, 2012). "The orgiast: an interview with Joe Dante (part one)". Chicago Reader. Retrieved February 13, 2016.
  8. ↑ "The Den of Geek interview: Joe Dante". Den of Geek. February 21, 2008. Retrieved 2014-06-18.
  9. ↑ Looney Tunes: Back in Action soundtrack review at Filmtracks.com. Retrieved 2011-03-18.
  10. ↑ "Looney Tunes: Back in Action (2003)". Box Office Mojo. Internet Movie Database. Retrieved 2011-12-02.
  11. ↑ Beck, Jerry (2005). The Animated Movie Guide.
  12. ↑ "Looney Tunes: Back in Action". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved 2008-01-29.
  13. ↑ "Looney Tunes: Back in Action Reviews, Ratings, Credits, and More". Metacritic. Retrieved 2008-01-29.
  14. ↑ "Looney Tunes: Back in Action :: rogerebert.com :: Reviews". Rogerebert.suntimes.com. November 14, 2003. Retrieved October 29, 2012.

External links

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