Looney Tunes: The Day The Earth Blew Up is listed as a 2024 movie, but it was heavily delayed over on the other side of the Atlantic. It’s hitting United Kingdom and Irish cinemas starting February 13th, 2026. If you are over that way, here is your chance to know what I thought of it!

It’s wild that in the 2020’s, there is a new WB Looney Tunes movie but Bugs Bunny is nowhere to be seen. He is the staple creation of the Warner Brothers animation department, but they completely hand the reins over to Porky Pig and Daffy Duck for this venture, which is a brave call.

The story behind The Day The Earth Blew Up sees an alien invasion come to Earth with a plan revolving around mind controlling bubble gum. Meanwhile, we get the family history of Porky and Daffy. They were adopted together by a friendly hillbilly known as Farmer Jim and raised by him. As they become adults, Farmer Jim passes on and leaves his house to the duo. After the alien invasion inadvertently destroys their roof, they come into peril of losing their beloved family home.

These plots intersect as Daffy and Porky meet Petunia Pig and get a job at her gum factory. Daffy catches wind of the alien plot, but given his usual lunacy, no one takes him seriously when he explains the gum is tainted. By the time he finally manages to convince Petunia and Porky, the whole town has been taken over. Will the trio of heroes be enough to save the Earth from blowing up?!

TWO UPS AND TWO DOWNS

+ In this era of CGI, it’s great to see some classic 2D animation in the style of the original Looney Tunes. It’s obviously a lot cleaner and more crisp than the classic cartoon since it had the budget to be done by the best animators WB could get their hands on in 2024, but it’s still similar to what you remember. 

There are so many animated movies nowadays that rely on CGI and 3D animation as almost a crutch. And there are others like the Spider-Verse pictures or something like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Mutant Mayhem that really play around with exactly what animation can even be nowadays. And while all of that looks great and is visually stunning, there is something comforting about seeing a movie come out and say, “We aren’t messing with a classic formula. You are here for what you remember from Looney Tunes, and we are going to give it to you”. I find that somewhat refreshing, even as I love a lot of modern animation.

+ Petunia Pig is undersold in the advertising, but she is equally as important as Porky and Daffy in The Day The Earth Blew Up. It’s nice to see the movie give some shine to a secondary Warner character like her. She was never relevant to the older cartoons that I remember, but she is a main character here. Seriously, think about your childhood: you were probably familiar with Petunia, but do you have any specific memories of her? Almost certainly not.

Well this movie seeks to correct that, and allow itself to be an in to young girls as an audience, as well. Looney Tunes feels like a boy-dominated property. I don’t recall a lot of girls I knew having been fans of it. Probably because they didn’t have an in to it. But if the marketing had focused more on Petunia, this flick could have done better in theaters in the United States by helping cultivate a more diverse audience.

– While this may or may not be a hit with kids, the humor didn’t really land for me. It’s a lot of pratfalls and immature silliness. I am not the target audience, and that’s okay, but I can’t really say that this was for me at all. And I don’t think there are enough gags to keep adults entertained while the kiddos are enjoying this. This is absolutely more aimed at kids than keeping their parents engaged.

The best kids movies are the ones that leave enough in to amuse the adults that are being coerced into watching with their kids. And I just don’t think that The Day The Earth Blew Up hits that target. It goes all the way in catering to children. And like I said: that’s okay! But it affected my enjoyment of it.

– When you get near the end, and I don’t want to spoil anything, your mind will immediately be drawn to another well known flick’s resolution to a problem. It’s so weird that this movie does everything it does just to end up aping an older summer blockbuster flick. It’s not even remotely subtle about it, either. It’s obviously Looney Tunes-ified, but it’s extremely derivative.

OVERALL

The Day The Earth Blew Up is a perfectly fine Looney Tunes film, and Looney Tunes is a property that doesn’t feel like it gets the respect it deserves from the higher-ups at Warner Brothers in the modern world. But as a kid, I absolutely adored watching those cartoons. And as a teen, I thought Space Jam was a lot of fun. So I had an affection for this franchise before coming into this new effort. I wish I could say I enjoyed this flick as much as I wanted to, but like I said… it felt like WB was shooting for kids way more than adults.