BEFORE: Since tonight's film features Porky Pig, let me tell you what happened this weekend when I tried to go to Pig Island, which is a not-annual BBQ and beer festival on Staten Island. I've been to that location before, the same event company used to run an event called Rib King there. Now, usually I try to be first in line for beer festivals, the reason being that if I'm at the end of a VERY long entry line, by the time they check everyone's IDs and hand out wristbands and sample glasses, I could lose up to 30 minutes of drinking time, and that's no bueno. So I planned to wake up at 9 am (on a Saturday) so I could leave the house by 9:15 and be sure to catch the 11 am ferry to Staten Island, and my friend agreed to the same timetable. Well, that's not what happened. I had difficulty falling asleep, this happens often when I'm anxious about waking up on time. Yes, the very thing I'm trying to do - fall asleep and wake up on time - brings me such concern that I can't do it.
So I woke up at 9, and I was so relieved that I woke up at 9 that I relaxed, and fell back to sleep. Great. I got up and got dressed and was out the door by 10:15, but there was no way I could make that 11 am ferry. So I texted my friend and told her to go on ahead, I'd catch up. The festival was scheduled for 12 pm to 4 pm, so I figured there was plenty of time. I got to Union Square and took an "R" train downtown, it was on the local track so it should have taken me to the Whitehall St. subway stop, which is just steps from the ferry. Service to that stop had been suspended, but my phone app told me it would be restored that day. But then I looked up and the train was going over the bridge to Brooklyn, now it was a certainty I wouldn't make the 11 am ferry, and probably not the 11:30 one, either. Took the train back and the closest I could get to the ferry was Canal St., which meant I needed to walk down to Whitehall, a 25 minute walk at a fast pace, however, I was still limping a bit due to the sprained ankle. At this point my brain was telling me to give up, just go home and eat the cost of the festival ticket (I paid $49, a discount price, full price would have been $71). But for some reason I kept going, made that long walk and I caught the 12:30 ferry to Staten Island. My friend had gone on ahead as I suggested.
I took a bus to the event and checked in about 1:15 pm, the check-in guy told me there was "still plenty of food" which simply was not true. About half of the booths had run out of food, and the beer was completely gone. All of it, gone. Suddenly I remembered a Rib King event at the same location a few years previous, one which had run out of ribs around 3:00 pm, not 4. For that one I arrived early and had my fill of ribs, so it didn't really bother me. But this, showing up an hour late and finding out the event was already out of beer AND running out of food, yeah, I was angry. Half angry at myself for being late and half angry at the organizers for clearly not bringing enough samples to hand out. I stood in line at the few booths that still had pork samples to hand out, and probably ate about $10 worth of food, there was still a whole hog being carved up and I stood in that line three times, and that was a LONG line. I probably had the equivalent of a light lunch, like I'm a big dude and you're seriously going to hand me this teeny, tiny food sample? What is up with that?
For some reason, the food and beer vendors who ran out of product stuck around, with nothing to hand out. I guess maybe their rides weren't coming until later, or it would be too obvious if they left early that they failed to bring enough. Meanwhile, the VIP area was still filled with people eating and drinking, so I think I know what was going on, the event hosts made their money from the VIP tables, meanwhile they told the people with discount tickets, like me, that there was no more food or beer, which seems extremely shady to me, possibly illegal. I resolved to never go to another event from this organizer ever again, especially not with discount tickets, and well, I certainly can't afford VIP ticket prices. At 2:30 they started breaking down the booths (remember, the event was supposed to go until 4 pm, but I think the fix was in) and I left at 3, but inquired about a refund on the way out. They told me I would have to contact the ticket broker, and I did, but I only got $12 back for my troubles, meaning I paid $37 for a couple tiny pork samples and NO beer. There were animal rights activists protesting the event, and I was able to tell them that I barely ate anything at all, so they should leave me alone. (Actually I told them I was once married to a vegetarian, and I'd heard it all before.)
So that happened - I'm waiting now for other people to complain on-line so I can weigh in and support them. I happen to know the organizer, he used to run a restaurant in the East Village that hosted beer dinners occasionally. He's a well-liked businessman in the beer community, but now I'm realizing how much of a shady weasel he also is, and I strongly suspect he oversold the event and also told the food vendors to not bring too much, I mean, who plans for a four-hour event that runs out of food and beer after an hour? I work part-time at a basketball stadium that serves 13,000 people at a time and NEVER runs out of beer, that would be bad for business.
Rachel Butera carries over from "Smurfs" (2025)
THE PLOT: Porky Pig and Daffy Duck are Earth's only hope when facing the threat of alien invasion.
AFTER: Now that I have my path(s) to Christmas, it's time to start thinking about Halloween season. Oh, the chain knows that it's coming, and really, what is the chain but my own subsconscious, speaking to me through the proper sequencing of movies. The call is coming from inside the house, and the chain is my brain, what other explanation could there be? So the September chain contains a few films that were NOT classified as horror films, but they're kind of on the edge of horror. Alien invasion movies kind of ride that fine line between sci-fi and horror, they're sometimes just a little bit of both. In addition to two alien invasion films this month, I've got a "Predator" film (that's kind of an alien movie, too, right?) and at least one film titled "Anaconda". Creature horror, giant snakes, aliens, oh, we're in spooky season already, we just haven't really felt the full impact yet. Prepare yourself...
Of course, this is just a cartoon - and a Looney Tunes cartoon at that. What could possibly go wrong here, except for absolutely everything? Daffy Duck is about to run "amuck" and pretty much duck everything up, and I can really empathize. Every time they put me on a new station at the stadium without properly training me, I just know something's about to go wrong, possibly at near "I Love Lucy" conveyor-belt levels. I feel you, Daffy.
Porky is Daffy's best friend here, they gave Bugs Bunny the weekend off, it seems. You know, there's hasn't been a movie with the Looney Tunes characters since "Space Jam: A New Legacy", and then before that there was "Looney Tunes: Back in Action", way back in the early 2010's. We just don't get enough of these characters these days, why would Warner Brothers just back-burner their best characters, at least where movies are concerned? I know that "Coyote vs. Acme" is in theaters now, so maybe they can get some momentum again. I mean, "Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile" was little more than a re-working of the "One Froggy Evening" cartoon, but come on, we need a movie with Tasmanian Devil and Speedy Gonzalez and Elmer Fudd and Tweety and Sylvester in it, everybody at once, "Roger Rabbit"-style.
Instead, this is Looney Tunes characters in a post-"Ren and Stimpy", post "South Park" animation universe. Like in the old Looney Tunes you wouldn't see a character's naked butt or really have any sexual innuendo at all. OK, maybe Pepe le Pew got a little handsy when he tried to seduce a cat, but you wouldn't have Daffy Duck talking about Petunia Pig by saying, "Oh, look at that tasty dish, I bet you'd love to have a slice of THAT!" Of course, Daffy was talking about the pie on the diner shelf, not the female pig sitting at the counter, but the old cartoons still wouldn't have gone there. You can feel the influence that more modern animators had here, if John Kricfalusi hadn't gotten himself cancelled in 2020, this movie might have worked with Ren & Stimpy in it, instead of Porky and Daffy. Just sayin'.
In what we could consider to be a "reboot" of the whole Looney-verse, this film adds an origin story where Porky and Daffy are found as babies by Farmer Jim, and raised as adoptive brothers. Huh, who knew? According to their flashback, Farmer Jim didn't die, exactly, he sort of ascended into the sky, Jesus-style, and the last thing he told them was to "stick together" and "take care of their home". As adults, they are best friends and roomates, or hetero life-partners in a mixed-species relationship, if you prefer. They don't live on the farm anymore, which raises some questions, maybe, about what happened to it - but they share a house in the town of Grandview, and we see them getting ready for the annual home inspection. They fail, however, because there's a giant hole in the roof that somehow neither of them noticed.
We, the audience, happen to know that their house was hit by a UFO that was on its way to ao crash landing, and the only character in the movie who noticed it was a scientist with a telescope, who first saw an asteroid heading toward Earth, then got a bit distracted by the UFO. Umm, I think they prefer to be called UFPs, now, which are "Unidentified Flying Phenomena" - the "O" stands for "object" and that's quite literally objectifying, OK? I figured (incorrectly) that we would be seeing an appearance from the "Marvin the Martian" character, but they kind of went a different way with this, and that's fine.
I don't want to give too much away here, but it plays out like one of those "Invasion of the Body Snatchers"-type films from the 1950's, where the aliens have a way of taking over human bodies through a form of mind control, essentially turning them into zombies. Gum-chewing, mindless zombies. But then of course there's a twist, because nothing is really what it seems to be at first. It's really hard to have NITPICK POINTS regarding a Looney Tunes cartoon, not only because they (eventually) did address the goofs that I noticed - they're still mistakes, but at least they acknowledged them, as they were necessary to drive the plot forward.
Really, a lot happens here, they kept this one moving FAST and packed a lot into 90 minutes, even loose parodies of the films "Independence Day" and "Armageddon". I'm betting that they might have wanted to use the title "Farmageddon" here, if it hadn't already been used by that Shaun the Sheep movie. It just feels fairly disjointed at times because it's trying to be both a classic toon and a more modern toon at the same time. I don't think you can please everyone that way, satisfying both the older animation fans while still attracting a younger crowd to the same characters.
Directed by Peter Browngardt
Also starring the voices of Eric Bauza (last heard in "The Super Mario Bros. Movie"), Candi Milo (last heard in "Space Jam: A New Legacy"), Peter MacNicol (last seen in "Film Geek"), Fred Tatasciore (last heard in "Trolls Band Together"), Laraine Newman (last seen in "I'm Chevy Chase and You're Not"), Wayne Knight (last heard in "GOAT"), Ruth Clampett, Andrew Kishino (last heard in "The Monkey King"), Kimberly Brooks (last heard in "Spies in Disguise"), Keith Ferguson (last heard in "Chuck"), Carlos Alazraqui (last heard in "Free Birds"), Peter Browngardt, Nick Simotas
RATING: 6 out of 10 sets of wind-up novelty teeth
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