More than making up for the lame excuse for a film that was the
widely panned "Space Jam", this live-action/animation combination featuring Warner's cartoon characters perfectly
recaptures the classic Looney Tunes' wonderfully nonsensical,
freewheeling spirit. There isn't much in a way of an acceptable or
even decent plot, actually, but don't let that deter you since that's
precisely the reason why any attempt to fit the Looney Tunes gang
into a full-length film would flounder. Instead, director Joe Dante
and writer Larry Doyle erect a perilously teetering scaffold upon
which an insanely huge number of amazingly good sight gags and
verbal puns is set, while at the same time paying some sort of
warped tribute to classic sci-fi B-films of the fifties. The `plot' has
Daffy Duck fired from Warners by executive Jenna Elfman as
outdated, then proceeding to get security guard Brendan Fraser
fired along with him, and both embarking on a nutty drive to Las
Vegas to find the whereabouts of Fraser's dad, film star/spy
Timothy Dalton, eventually uncovering a dastardly conspiracy from
ACME chairman Steve Martin to use the Blue Monkey diamond to
enslave mankind. Of course it doesn't make sense, and that's fine
-- it's not meant to. You may point out that the live action/animation
combination doesn't always work, that the live actors never reach
the manic intensity of the cartoon characters (except for Joan
Cusack's wonderfully, ahem, daffy cameo), but really, that's beside
the point when the gratuitously violent and deliriously politically
incorrect free-for-all of the original cartoons is so perfectly
duplicated here.
widely panned "Space Jam", this live-action/animation combination featuring Warner's cartoon characters perfectly
recaptures the classic Looney Tunes' wonderfully nonsensical,
freewheeling spirit. There isn't much in a way of an acceptable or
even decent plot, actually, but don't let that deter you since that's
precisely the reason why any attempt to fit the Looney Tunes gang
into a full-length film would flounder. Instead, director Joe Dante
and writer Larry Doyle erect a perilously teetering scaffold upon
which an insanely huge number of amazingly good sight gags and
verbal puns is set, while at the same time paying some sort of
warped tribute to classic sci-fi B-films of the fifties. The `plot' has
Daffy Duck fired from Warners by executive Jenna Elfman as
outdated, then proceeding to get security guard Brendan Fraser
fired along with him, and both embarking on a nutty drive to Las
Vegas to find the whereabouts of Fraser's dad, film star/spy
Timothy Dalton, eventually uncovering a dastardly conspiracy from
ACME chairman Steve Martin to use the Blue Monkey diamond to
enslave mankind. Of course it doesn't make sense, and that's fine
-- it's not meant to. You may point out that the live action/animation
combination doesn't always work, that the live actors never reach
the manic intensity of the cartoon characters (except for Joan
Cusack's wonderfully, ahem, daffy cameo), but really, that's beside
the point when the gratuitously violent and deliriously politically
incorrect free-for-all of the original cartoons is so perfectly
duplicated here.