Les Looney Tunes passent à l'action

Forget "Roger Rabbit", but forget also "Space Jam". It is so sad when three great actors like Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and Steve Martin blatantly "do it for the > money" (or the carrots, or whatever they pay Daffy with). All three of them do a really poor standard performance... The human villain thinks it's enough to act stupid to look like a cartoon, the two toons seem to justify wooden acting with pretending to be human. A recent Hollywood fashion is an attitude like "Hey, let's get something that worked in the past, cut some stupid expenses like a decent screenwriter, and let's be back in the big bucks again! Just put in some expensive-looking effects and the morons won't notice!" - Matrix 2.1 and 2.2 as a case in point. And the effects are marginally under standard, too. Bottom line, I definitely didn't like it; make it 5/10, and just thanks to the only true professional there: Vile E. Coyote, great as usual (and quoting himself, they pay him WAY too little).

An almost total mess, and no-one wanted to like it more than me.

The live action sequeces are flat emotionally, photographically, dramatically and every other way: Dante seems have done the impossible by making Brandon Frase, Jenna Elfman, Steve Martin and Joan Cusack plus various culty walkongs (Roger Corman, Mary Woronov) unfunny, unbelievable, and uninteresting.

The model, curiously, is not so much Who Killed Roger Rabbit as Rodriguez's Spy Kids movies -- but without the heart or the inspired originality and ingenuity. Instead, it's mindsplitting, unrelentingly meta, carpetbombing the audience with more movie quotes than Tarantino has in "Kill Bill." You say, "Sure, I remember that cartoon well, and it was a helluvalot better than this."

What the film needs -- particularly since it's gotta be pointed at least partially at kids -- is some kid characters, interesting ones. Instead, it just has lame Hollywood jokes, lame Las Vegas jokes, lame Paris jokes, and lame movie auteur jokes that had my seven year old son wondering when it was going to be funny. Sure, it was sometimes: if you go to the well that often, you'll find water somewhere.

The one exception to the general sloppy anarchy is a wonderful sequence with Bugs and Daffy chasing through the Louvre, into painting after painting after painting (most of them not at the Louvre, but so what). I'd love to have it on a loop, with the rest of the film surgically removed.

Even though I had heard good things about this film, I didn't expect that much....but was very surprised. It's good, very entertaining and worth watching. The humor is excellent with some very funny things in here and very clever in spots. It helps a lot to know your Looney Tunes characters and it helps a great deal to know your film history. References to old films and characters are everywhere. For that reason, I would recommend this film for classic movie fans. They'll be pleasantly surprised.

On the bad side, I found the film too loud, which is no surprise since cartoons tend to be that way. The loudest may have been Daffy Duck, who is a major player in this film. The female lead, Jenna Elman, is too hard-looking and just not likable to me.

The positives outweigh the negatives, however. If you can put up with the loudness and stupid acting (Steve Martin is brutal here in that regard), you'll still get a ton of laughs out of this movie.

I really like Jenna Elfman (Kate) as a comedienne. She generally does pretty well. She started off great in Looney Tunes searching for Daffy Duck to get him back to the studio, because her job depended on it. But then the plot morphs into Brendan Fraser (Drake) looking for his father and Elfman becomes simply a spectator in the second half of the movie. She becomes a prop on the set, rather than a character having something to do with the action.

After her trip to Las Vegas in the film, Kate serves pretty much as a prop rather than as a character. She does throw a monkey wrench and puts a piece into a puzzle. But after the trip to Las Vegas, Ms. Elfman is mostly just a prop on the set. When the camera goes to her, she is simply standing there watching at Brendan Fraser (Drake) do his part. Fraser does pretty well. He does act through out, but in the second half of the film Elfman is simply a prop.

I went to see this film as a fan of Ms. Elfman's. I heard Ms. Elfman on TV state that she wanted to do more films with Fraser. That will probably be a good thing. I know she can act as I have seen her in other films doing a great job. I think Elfman & Fraser will make a good pair, but Elfman has got to do more acting and less spectating. The definition of "act" is "do", not "spectate" or "watch".

I give the first half a 7 and the second half a 3 for an average of 5. After the first half I was just hoping it would end.

Ever since "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" hit theaters in 1988, Hollywood has tried to replicate the formula of placing animated characters in the real world and vice-versa. "Space Jam" was loved when first released but now seems like a feature length commercial for Michael Jordan's career. "The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle" worked on a spot-the-cameo level but little else. "Cool World" has for the most part blissfully faded from memory.

Then along comes "Looney Tunes: Back in Action" and does the impossible - it manages to be funny, entertaining and lively while still slowing things down at times to be insightful. Loaded with numerous celebrities mugging for the camera, satirical jabs at Hollywood and pop cultural references out the ying-yang, the movie has the true frantic nature of a cartoon.

Daffy Duck (voice of Joe Alaskey) has become fed up by constantly playing second banana to Bugs Bunny (also Alaskey) for the past six decades. He makes an ultimatum - either he gets equal billing and pay alongside Bugs, or he's out of there. Warner Bros. Vice President Kate Houghton (Jenna Elfman) promptly gives the duck the boot, and while vindictively wrecking havoc on the studio lot, Daffy hooks up with ne'er do well security guard D.J. Drake (Brendan Fraser) who happens to be the son of famous movie spy Damian Drake (Timothy Dalton).

D.J. is fired as well for not be able to stop Daffy's rampage, and reluctantly goes home with the duck in tow. However, things go crazy when he discovers that his father really is a spy and has been captured by the evil President of the ACME Corporation (Steve Martin). D.J must take up his father's mission of seeking the Blue Monkey Diamond, a mystical jewel that - like all mystical items in such movies - can be deadly in the wrong hands. Daffy's eyes naturally light up with greed at the sound of the word diamond and joins D.J.

Meanwhile, Kate is facing her own dismissal following less then stellar studio reviews of the latest Bugs cartoon without Daffy, and must track down the duck with Bugs' help to convince him to return. The four unlikely heroes team up to stop ACME, save Damian Drake and patch up Bugs and Daffy's fractured partnership.

A lot of love went into this product and it shows. Some of the best jokes are attacks on numerous sensitivity issues that protest groups have mounted against cartoons in the past few decades. Porky Pig and Speedy Gonzalez lament the effect that political correctness is having on their careers while Daffy is told that his constant complaining makes him appealing only to angry bald men who live in basements.

Sight gags rain in as well, the most memorable being a wonderfully conceived scene in the Louvre Museum in Paris where Elmer Fudd chases Bugs and Daffy in and out of numerous famous paintings like "The Scream" and "Persistence of Memory."

The voice acting here is all near perfect. Alaskey does a much better job imitating Mel Blanc's famous Bugs Bunny voice then Billy West did in "Space Jam." Bugs is still the street smart Brooklyn hustler he has always been, and adds a nice bit of levity to the proceedings.

Daffy is still delightfully conceited and selfish, though in a nice change of pace he is actually allowed to be heroic at some points. Also, it should be noted that while Bugs clearly control every scene he's in, this in indeed Daffy's movie and he carries it well.

Fraser has a strong enough presence to play alongside cartoon characters but doesn't have much to do in the humor department. We're reminded that like in "Dudley Do-Right," Fraser just can't make a character funny without decent lines.

Elfman is also lively but remains wallpaper to her animated co-stars, as she should. Dalton on the other hand manages to be serious and goofy at the same time, and seems to be having a great time spoofing his own James Bond character.

But it's Martin who really puts in a performance here, playing the ACME President with a combination of Jim Carrey's loose-limbed gait and Robin Williams' rapid-fire dialogue. He's a truly unique character for Martin to play, a live action cartoon competing for screen time with Bugs and the others. Martin makes him Dr. Evil as played by Jerry Lewis.

Director Joe Dante films this with the same tongue-in-cheek abandon that he used to bring "Gremlins" and "The Howling" to life. The movie's success owes much to his respect for cartoons, and his desire to undo the harm that "Space Jam" did to the characters is a breath of fresh air.

Along with fellow Warner Bros. characters like Wile E. Coyote, Pepe Le Pew and Sylvester the Cat, the movie also makes room for cameos by wrestler Bill Goldberg, Joan Cusack and even legendary B-movie schlockmeister Roger Corman.

"Looney Tunes: Back in Action" lacks the same originality that made "Roger Rabbit" immortal, but still has the energy and wit to remain memorable for decades to come. The movie twists the legends of the Warner stable while still honoring their personalities, and as such the movie works as both an homage to and a wink-at-the-audience spoof of the classic cartoons. It's a movie even Daffy will love.

Eight out of ten stars. Funny toons makes up for some lifeless actors, and the Looney Tunes legacy is returned to its former glory. Nothing despicable here.