BEFORE: Brendan Fraser carries over from "Furry Vengeance" as I wind down the month of talking animals. Wabbits, er, rabbits and ducks and pigs all count, right?
THE PLOT: The Looney Tunes search for a man's missing father and the mythical Blue Monkey diamond.
AFTER: I suppose if I suffered through "Space Jam" I should at least give them a chance to revive the franchise. They kept trying to make another "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" but I suspect that was like trying to catch lightning in a bottle.
Bugs and Daffy are the stars here, and Yosemite Sam, Elmer Fudd, Wile E. Coyote, Marvin the Martian and the Tasmanian Devil fit nicely into roles as villains, secretly working for the Acme Corporation. If they're so powerful, how come they can't make any road-runner catching devices that work right? Plus there are plenty of cameos from the lesser characters in the WB canon, like Beaky Buzzard, Nasty Canasta and the Three Bears.
Also for the adults, there are a lot of in-jokes about movie-making, and the hyper-self awareness wherein the characters know they are cartoons, and take advantage of that fact. The studio executives complain that you can't just keep blowing Daffy Duck up again and again, and later in the film that exact situation comes up. Fraser plays a stuntman who doubled for Brendan Fraser in "The Mummy", due of course to their incredible resemblance.
But unfortunately there's a lot that doesn't make sense, especially the evil plan of the head of the Acme Corp. That, and a lot of other things, come from a place so far out in left field that it made me wonder how they got into the game at all. Overall, this film tried to appeal to children and adults by being a combination of action, comedy, animation and intrigue, and ended up mostly incoherent.
So it's another split decision tonight -
Also starring Steve Martin (last seen in "Mixed Nuts"), Jenna Elfman (last seen in "Grosse Pointe Blank"), Joan Cusack (last seen in "Sixteen Candles"), Timothy Dalton (last seen in "The Tourist"), Heather Locklear (last seen in "The First Wives Club"), with cameos from Bill Goldberg, Ron Perlman (last seen in "The Last Supper"), Robert Picardo, racer Jeff Gordon, Michael Jordan, and Peter Graves. Voices by Joe Alaskey, Jeff Bennett, Billy West, June Foray, and three people I've met: Eric Goldberg, Stan Freberg and Will Ryan.
RATING: 5 out of 10 jet-packs
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