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Best of 2025 Movies #5: The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie

A pair of adopted brothers face home foreclosure while finding jobs and love all before a conspiracy gets uncovered leading to an unexpected chain of events.

Those brothers just happen to be Porky Pig and Daffy Duck.

Minor Spoilers Ahead

It's a miracle that I got to sit down and watch this film with my friend Cory sunday. In a time when Warner Bros Discovery is in a constant state of burning itself down for the insurance money where anything and everything animated not shielded by James Gunn or Adult Swim is getting ignored and barely promoted at best or thrown in a vault for the writeoff at worst, it's a miracle on top of a miracle that this film actually got released.

It was a struggle to get there: Director Pete Browngardt, in an interview the Hollywood Reporter, mentioned he felt the film was almost cancelled no less than four times and even when finished, had to shop itself around like an indie movie. With the streaming market slowly collapsing in on itself, no streamer wanted it. It was only through a great debut at the Annercy Animation Festival that the film got picked up by Indie distrbutor ketchup entertainment and even then only got held over an extra week by popular demand, a demand that will hopefully only grow. This is a film that very easily could've been at worst lost media and at best leaked out by some hero for all to see.

Thankfully.. we got here. The film came out in theaters and has gotten such a postivie reception that an attempt to remove it from theaters this very wedsday was pushed back and it'll likely stay as long as it sells tickets. Given I saw this film in a packed theater, that's a very likely proposition.

The Day the Earth Blew Up spins out of Looney Tunes Cartoons, a series of shorts released either in front of films , at festivals or on HBO Max in the style of the classic era but with the zany sensiblities of 90's cartoon netowrk. Given showrunner Pete Browngardt, who pitched the job, created Uncle Grandpa, that isn't a huge suprise but what i've seen are solid, fun shorts with the right spirit.

You can feel Browngardt and crew's love for looney tunes: there's tons of little nods to their history in there: Daffy and Porky's search for a job is styled as a short complete with title cards and old timey aspect ratio, Daffy does a very bugs-esque wild take, we get a gorgeous art deco musical sequence set to "powerhouse" aka that stock factory music I can't describe in print but you've certainly heard, and the finale has possibly the best use of the Looney Tunes theme in the whole franchise and there's a bunch more I didn't even spot.

The Day the Earth Blew Up gets the tone perfect: It has what you'd expect from the classic shorts: rapid fire jokes, one after another often getting crap passed the radar at a master level, the best bit of adult humor being Daffy telling the main villian he can probe them in an increasingly long list of places including "A truck stop bathroom" but he can't take their freedom. The film has great pacing on it's joke, letting the plot breathe when needed but cramming in as many as possible. I was in tears at times, with a truly perfect needle drop of Bryan Adams treacly "Everything I Do", an awkard animation walk cycle for the ages, Daffy thinking our main export is smog, and an overly long crashing gag that rivals "Dental Plan, Lisa Needs Braces' in hilariously over done gags. I could honestly just list punchlines for several paragraphs, but it's best you see this for yourself. The hurricane of jokes i'll watch over and over again is held up by a simple but shockingly strong plot: Porky and Daffy are orphans who were raised at adopted brothers who call themselves friends for some reason, raised under the watchful eye of Farmer Jim, a matte painting whose only animation is in his synchro vox styled lips. The two eventually loose him when he just... goes into the clouds one day and get by on their own.

Naturally for this kind of picture, they soon encounter trouble: a meteor grazes their house, and to pass inspection they have to pay money they don't have. A series of hilariously failed jobs, sight gags and one murder later and our heroes are seemingly screwed till they meet Petunia. Petunia is a looney tune whose barely been used a lot of the time, mostly there to be Porky's love intrest and.. tha'ts about it.

The film keeps up this streak as i'ts love at first sight in a genuinely charming scene as we cut between porky's lovestruck vision of her, with a glow behind her and perfect hair.. and the beaten down real petunia fresh out of the rain and exausted. It's a sweet moment and the two have impecable chemistry. Petunia instantly bonds with her future boyfriend and his brother and is given her own goals outside of a cute as hell romance plot: to make a perfect gum flavor since the company she works for is content to just coast on the popular ones, trying squid ink, rotten eggs and making daffy explode at one point, which he takes well. He's a champ that daffy and a solid wing man.

Our heroes get a factory job that works for once.. just as an alien that what came from outer space decides to conquer earth using gum. It's up to our heroes to save the earth. The problem is.. Porky is slowly wearing of daffy, feeling he screws things up, worrying about Daffy tanking his relationship and later tanking the world with his antics. What's neat about it is it's shockingly nuanced: Normally when Daffy's in conflict, he's usually just.. an asshole. That's the version I grew up with: a selfish prima donna constantly envious of bugs. Sometimes he's right to be pissed, see back in action, most of the time he's just a selfish weasel who the universe punishes for his hubris.

Here he's been recanted perfectly: This daffy has his usually intentional selfishness and deep seated insecurity left out. He's instead similar to his The Looney Tunes Show Version (Aka my faviorite daffy), a weirdo in his own little world, but without any of that daffy's danny mcbride character level pettyniess. This Daffy instead comes off midly neurodivergent, not really getting social cues or why attacking the neighbor while buck naked and accusing their employer of an evil conspiracy might be a bad idea long term. He's a loveable weirdo who still has daffy's wit , timing and accuracey, but is also a screw loose.

Porky's straight edged nature, instead of making him fade into the background as it can, works as a perfect contrast. He loves his brother but is frustrated by his antics and slowly let's that resintment boil over. It reminds me of my relationship with my own sibling: We love each other.. but being that diffrent from one another and in my case sometimes incosiderate can be a lot. You get why Porky's frustrated.. yet you understand he's overblowing things. Daffy means well, sets porky up with petunia and is a generally kind guy. He's just all together looney and tha'ts okay. Porky learns to accept that and Daffy learns to gain some awareness. And Petunia.. dosen't have an arc but she's damn near perfect, Porky's a lucky man, and she's a really fun character that I hope sets the standard for her, a woman of science.. who will also nearly taste mind controlling gum out of curosity and is more concerned with eating the bland standard gum than the fact she was taken by aliens. The performances from voice acting vetrans Eric Bauza as both main characters and Candi Milo as Petunia are incredible and both should be kept as the characters voices. The way Eric just flawlessly acts off himself in the bulk of the film is astonishing.

The rest of the cast is small, and it works: the film's an invasion film leaning into a retros ci fi astetic with some 80s body horror thrown in. There's the invasion of the body snatchers refrence you'd expect, some flamethrowers the thing style, but it never leans too heavily into it's refrences. Which is something the Looney Tunes can do well

But isn't needed here. There's really only 7 major characters, the rest extras and what have you: our power trio, the alien, a scientest woh the alien brainwashes into his dopey minon, the house inspector and wayne knight as the mayor, who really needed more to do. It's a film first and formost about it's main characters and it's jokes and it works. I'd love a more character focused bugs bunny movie or tweety being banished to the styigan pit he was spawned from where he belongs.

The film is pretty much perfectly paced: it moves from set piece to set piece fast and furious, lingering just long enough and having the slower parts mostly to give characters depth. It's a gorgeous film too, with tons of great "camera angles", and plays with the animations. It's expressive, bouncy and a joy to watch. It's been too long since a 2d animated film on this level was put on a big screen and I hope we get more.

Porky and Daffy

Face bubble gum invasion

Fighting for their home

MCE The Jaw Droppers 2025: Honorable Mention

Porky and Petunia Vs the Gumzombies

Never had gum looked more terrifying than here.

While in a plot to spread mind controlled laced gum all over the planet, Porky and Petunia find an antidote.

The invader turns the mindless drones into rage zombies sending them on a collision path.

Which of course needs a certain REM classic to be its background music.

More of this.