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Looney Tunes: Back In Action
Movie
Looney Tunes: Back In Action
Director
Joe Dante
Cast
Brendan Fraser, Timothy Dalton, Jenna Elfman, Steve Martin

By Subhash K Jha


In a world dominated by inner and outer stress it’s sometimes heartening to simply go with the flow, lose ourselves in a world of utter makebelieve brdering on chaotic lunacy. That’s what Looney Tunes purports to do this Christmas.

It’s a full-time go-for-it blues-chaser with the smart and sassy band of Warner Brothers’cartoon creations rubbing shoulders with real actors.

The heady mix is unsteady, wonky, woozy and wacko…And yet director Joe Dante (who specializes in creating outlandish pockets of entertainment, like Gremlins and Innerspace) succeeds in holding the slender narration together on the strength of his outward-projected mockery of big-studio conventions, such as the arbitrary hire-and-fire system of acquiring stars.

The film begins with a very funny board-room encounter between arch-rivals Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck which tilts the success scale in Bunny’s favour. Daffy is sacked by the fastidious bosses obsessed with results. Off goes Daffy on a global adventure with a sacked stuntman (Brendan Fraser).

Ha ha. The laughter doesn’t really roll out in a free-flowing stream. It instead trickles out in little rivulets of risible romance. What really keeps you watching as Dante romances the ‘tones’ is the live-animation interaction which is done with the least amount of selfcongratulation. The special effects are truly first-rate.

Low-brow heart-throb Brendan Fraser has a thankless task. Having to compete with cartoon characters who have been loved for decades isn’t easy. Fraser doesn’t try to compete with the bravura gallery of scenestealers. He simply goes with the fabulous flow, often sharing our amusement and stupefaction.

His co-star Jenna Elfman has a rather interesting role of an over-worked keyed-up executive constantly badgered into delivering results. But the film’s real surprise is Steve Martin as the comic villain who lords over a crime organization called ACME and is unpredictable as Jack Nicholson in Batman Returns though far less magnetic. Martin plays the villain as an over-the-topple forever-falling farcical clown.

The inhouse studio-city jokes cut deep. Timothy Dalton who once played James Bond is cast as Fraser’s superspy-father. In many vital ways this cartoon caper parodies formulistic flavours like long-lost parents and road-travel romance. Seen in the light of its upturned cliches Looney Tunes : Back In Action doesn’t have as much to offer either young or grownup audiences as one would expect.

Unlike the recent Disney disarmer Finding Nemo, this one falls short in terms of plot and narrative style. But the cartoon figures are a delight to watch in their supercilious sagacity vis a vis the human characters. You may not think much of Fraser’s quest for the ‘blue monkey diamond’(oh geez!). But you won’t stop yourself from smiling when Daffy Duck looks askew at the stunt-hero when he claims he’s Brendan Fraser’s twin brother.

Flashy and farcical Looney Tunes moves through Las Vegas and Paris and then expels its funny fumes into outer space at a manic pace. Its in-your-face lowbrow magic doesn’t parallel the chic shindings of the other cartoon-human interaction in Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

But Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck have never been more belligerent. Or cute.