Looney Tunes: Back in Action

Looney Tunes: Back in Action
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Dan Aykroyd
Produced by	Michael Jordan
Screenplay by	Bugs Bunny
Story by	Daffy Duck
Starring	Daffy Duck Bugs Bunny Brendan Fraser Lindsay Lohan Steve Martin Elmer Fudd Timothy Dalton Joan Cusack Jessica Rabbit
Music by	Jerry Goldsmith
Cinematography	Marvin the Martian
Edited by	Elmer Fudd
Production company	Warner Bros. ACME Corporation
Distributed by	Warner Bros. Pictures
Release date(s)	November 14, 2003  (2003 -11-14)
Running time	93 disjointed minutes
Country	United States France Africa Mars
Language	English Martian
Budget	$80 million
Box office	$68.5 million

Looney Tunes: Back in Action (also known as James Bond Meets Daffy Duck and That Space Jam Sequel (of Sorts) That Nobody Remembers) is a 2003 American live-action/animated hybrid film with a plot thinner than a sheet of paper that's been flattened by a steamroller, centering around the true events of the fall and comeback of Looney Tunes star Daffy Duck. It is considered a spiritual sequel of sorts to Space Jam, but unlike Space Jam, there was no basketball, memorable soundtrack, or Lola Bunny's "Bunnie Boobies" here, thus making the film far less memorable than its predecessor.

Plot

Set seven years after Bugs Bunny openly shouted "fiddlesticks" on national television, the Warner Bros. staff are looking for cutbacks to save the money being lost because of Bugs's offensive remark. Rather than lose their star rabbit, they fire Daffy Duck after he complains to Mr. Plotz (Steven Spielberg) that he is tired of playing second-banana to Bugs. DJ Brendan Fraser is asked to escort Daffy off the studio lot, but Daffy escapes into the Batmobile, and the ensuing chase leads to him demolishing the WB water tower, further cementing WB's decision to force him out onto the street. Back at the studio, DJ is fired after spilling a glass of water on WB vice-president Lindsay Lohan, and like Daffy, is furious at being fired and goes home to sulk. Meanwhile, Bugs makes sneering remarks about his then-wife Lola Bunny, openly calling her a "slag" and threatening to erase her if she stands up to him.

On the way home, DJ meets up with Daffy, and the two agree to sue the studio for damages. They go to DJ's place, where he gets yelled at by his landlady Ms. Peeman because he ruined her new carpet. While watching cartoons, the two find that DJ's VHS tape contains some secret stuff at the end; the tape reveals that DJ's father Damian (Timothy Dalton) was a famous secret agent, and he wishes for his son to recover the Blue Monkey, a rare African diamond, from evil hunter Elmer Fudd. At Warner Bros., Mr. Plotz sees a test-shot of Daffy's replacement Donald Duck, who can't get his lines right and is very incoherent. Eventually, Donald snaps and cusses at the director while vomiting over the stage; furious, Plotz fires him and threatens to fire Lohan as well, because she couldn't dress Bugs's wounds after he got shot by Elmer Fudd. Plotz states that if Lohan wants to keep her job, she must recover Daffy at all costs, who is rumored by the tabloids to be dead. Back at home, Lindsay sees Bugs in the shower and he screams (à la Psycho), then Bugs informs her of DJ and Daffy's whereabouts. The two then pursue Daffy and DJ in a car with Jeff Gordon.

DJ and Daffy drive to the Casino Royale in Las Vegas where Damian lives, and meet up with Dusty Trails (Jessica Rabbit), DJ's friend and a spy who gives them a strange Ace of Spades card, which will supposedly lead them to the Blue Monkey. Casino owner Yosemite Sam then appears and catches DJ and Daffy by just talking to Dusty, but they escape with Bugs, Lindsay, and Jeff and go on a wild car chase that takes them through a mall. The car crashes in Death Valley, a desert so hellish that even dirt can't live there, and the group sees a Wal-Mart in the middle of the valley which is owned by Mr. Chairman (Steve Martin), the owner of ACME who plans to use the Blue Monkey to take over the world and sell more merchandise. Knowing the group are on the Monkey's trail, he gets Wile E. Coyote to dress as a robot to annihilate them, but Wile E. gets run over by the Roadrunner. Our heroes escape the store with food, water, and clothing supplies after saying "Wal-Mart" several times.

The four heroes then wander into Area 52, run by a woman called "Mother" (Joan Cusack), who is a spy and DJ's mother. She reveals that ACME intends on using the Blue Monkey to transform mankind into monkeys to manufacture their products, before turning them back into human beings to purchase them, and provides them with new gadgets to fight the good fight. They are then captured by Marvin the Martian, but escape by telling him a Uranus joke. Our heroes notice that their Ace of Spades card has a Mona Lisa on it, and conclude that the card must look in the Mona Lisa's eyes to lead them to the Blue Monkey; Bugs gets the idea of travelling to Paris quickly through a page-turn scene transition. At the Louvre Museum, Bugs takes a picture of the Mona Lisa with his cell phone, then Elmer Fudd catches them and tries to kill them. While that was happening, DJ and Lindsay have a good time atop the Eiffel Tower and there's a cliché love scene, which is interrupted by Elmer. The four then escape with the Da Vinci Code, but Mr. Chairman swipes it from them while wearing a skunk suit, then receives an unwanted smooch from Pepé Le Pew.

The heroes then travel by hot air balloon with Granny, Sylvester the Cat, and Tweety Pie to Africa, and head into the temple where the Blue Monkey is located. There, they confront Elmer again and realize that he is not the villain they're looking for, but merely a stooge, as he explains that he'd been hired to hunt down the Monkey and take it to ACME. To his part, Bugs explains that he wanted to tour the world with the Blue Monkey after it was recovered, and use the exhibition to distract people while he pinched their pockets, which leads to an argument between him and Daffy over who will get the Blue Monkey when all this is over. Hearing all, Elmer acts on impulse and shoots Bugs again; DJ has to save Bugs before he dies, meeting up with a King (Sean Connery) and telling him about his friends. Elmer finds an unlabeled Blue Monkey that he thinks Jesus Christ drank from, but choses poorly; DJ then finds a Blue Monkey that just says "Jesus", and the King says he chose wisely. DJ gives the Monkey to Bugs and he drinks from it, instantly healing his wounds.

As the heroes leave the temple, they're stopped by the Tasmanian Devil, Marvin the Martian, Mr. Chairman, and The Moody Blues. They all get teleported to the Moon and Marvin demands that DJ gives him the Blue monkey, but Daffy turns into Duck Dodgers and heroically defeats Marvin with his laser gun. They take back the Monkey and return on Dodgers's ship to Earth, where it lands by the Hollywood sign. Mr. Chairman, who had snuck onto the ship, reappears and steals the Blue Monkey, but is then swallowed whole by an earthquake, and the King takes back the Monkey. And get this... this was all part of a movie that they were making anyhow! With the movie finished, Bugs and Daffy get respect and become WB stars again, DJ and Lindsay get married, DJ becomes a secret agent, and Lindsay finally moves onto a successful career in Playbunny magazine. Daffy then gets flattened by the Looney Tunes iris that falls from the ceiling; Porky Pig pops out and attempts to say "T-t-t-t-t-t-that's all folks!", but Michael Jordan steals the show and Porky just says "Son of a b-b-b-b-b-b-b...gun!"

Production

Originally, Back in Action was going to be a true-blue sequel to Space Jam titled Spy Jam, about Bugs and Daffy teaming up with Jackie Chan. However, this proved too expensive for Chan, and he was also too busy searching for talismans along with his niece and uncle at the time, so Warner Bros. switched him out in favor of Brendan Fraser, a rising young star fresh off the heels of The Mummy's success.

Warner Bros. asked Dan Aykroyd to direct Back in Action, having had previous success with Space Jam. For Back in Action, Aykroyd wished to do a more personal film that would recapture the feel of the classic Looney Tunes shorts, a contrast to Space Jam which he directed as more of a contractually-obligated sneaker commercial. Aykroyd regretted how his previous film represented the Looney Tunes brand, saying "I was making Back in Action as this gagfest movie that would act as a love-letter to those classic characters, and the Warner execs seemed to have no clue how to handle their own characters. They didn't want to know why Bugs Bunny shouldn't do hip-hop, or why Porky Pig shouldn't say 'I think I just wet myself.' It was a pretty grim experience all around."

Despite being directed by a true connoisseur of the original cartoons, Aykroyd stated that he had little creative freedom on the project, and called it "the most hellish year and-a-half of my life." He felt that while he managed to preserve the classic Looney Tunes feel via the animated characters, Warner Bros. executives stuck their slimy tentacles into the project and shifted too much focus onto the live-action celebrity characters and their cliche boring love story, creating an end product that was never quite as great as what Aykroyd envisioned.

Brendan Fraser did a ton of promotion for Back in Action on talk shows, throwing out statements such as "I hate Space Jam," "Everyone who worked on this movie hates Space Jam," "Space Jam sucks, it's ONLY about advertising," "If you liked Space Jam as a kid, you are a terrible person," etc. etc. etc. He also vowed Back in Action would be "The Anti-Space Jam"; some took this to mean that since Space Jam was critically panned, yet a box office slam-dunk, this would mean Back in Action would be critically praised, yet a box office bomb. Their predictions more or less turned out to be correct.

In Aykroyd's original cut of the movie, several more classic cartoon characters were intended to appear that were left out of the final cut, since there was no time nor did they really belong in the film, and Warner Bros. also wanted more screentime devoted to the boring celebrities. These scenes can, however, be seen on the DVD edition. For example, Donald Duck was supposed to have more than one scene in the movie, such as an early scene where he gets a "wardrobe malfunction" when the water from the collapsed WB water tower would wash his shirt away. Disney demanded a fee if Donald would be naked in a non-Disney film, however, so Warner omitted the scenes. The Animaniacs were also supposed to have a role by falling out of the demolished WB Water Tower, and laughing at Donald Duck's butt and undressed gut which would make Donald get angry and kick the Warners. But like Disney, Steven Spielberg demanded a fine to use these characters, though they were already owned by WB. Superman was also supposed to have a role in the end where he would save the heroes instead of Duck Dodgers, but Marvin would kill him with Kryptonite. But since the movie was rated PG, it didn't fly.

Reception

Like Space Jam, Back in Action received mixed reviews, with critics saying it didn't quite recapture the laughs of the '50s Looney Tunes cartoons, although it still fit the bill moreso than Space Jam. Leonard Maltin gave the film 2.5/5 stars, criticizing it for "stealing parts of almost every movie ever made. Even the ending used the score of Gone with the Wind!" Another reason why the movie bombed was that it focused on Daffy Duck rather than Bugs Bunny, as the plebeian public by and large prefers Bugs over Daffy, even though we all know Daffy is the true patrician's choice.

The film tanked at the box office, grossing $68.5 million worldwide, a meager half of Space Jam's earnings, against a budget of $80 million. Its bombing caused Cartoon Network to drop Looney Tunes from their lineup in 2004, as they believed the brand was no longer marketable; luckily, in 2009, it returned to their schedule, as they were desperate for viewers after making a failed block of live-action shows.

Despite its general failure, the film still won four Academy Awards: Best Film, Best Screenplay, Best Bunny Murder, and Best Tits (for the role of Lola). The film was also praised for its message of wildlife conservation, and the emotional depiction of Bugs's death.