Looney Tunes: Back in Action

Weary of playing villainous roles in Bugs Bunny's cartoons, Daffy Duck demands his own cartoon but is instead fired by Vice President of Comedy Kate Houghton. Security guard and aspiring stuntman DJ Drake is ordered to escort Daffy from the studio; in the ensuing chase, a Batmobile demolishes the water tower, leading to DJ's dismissal. Daffy follows DJ home, where the latter receives a message from his father, actor Damian Drake, who DJ learns is a secret agent. Damian tells DJ to travel to Las Vegas, contact his associate Dusty Tails, and find the blue monkey diamond. Damian is then captured by the Acme Corporation, led by the eccentric Mr. Chairman. DJ and Daffy depart for Las Vegas.

Meanwhile, the Warner Bros. CEOs are unpleased with the new cartoons starring Bugs, which decrease rapidly in quality without Daffy. They order Kate to find him and rehire him, or she will be fired instead. Kate and Bugs arrive at DJ's house, where they find Damian's TVR Tuscan and use it to pursue DJ and Daffy. In Las Vegas, DJ and Daffy meet Dusty in a casino owned by Yosemite Sam, who Acme employs. Dusty gives them a unique playing card, a clue to finding the diamond. Sam and his sidekicks pursue DJ and Daffy for the card, but they flee with Bugs and Kate. When the Tuscan crashes in a desert, the group camps out for the night while Bugs fails to convince Daffy to take his job back, with the latter revealing he envies Bugs for being so popular with so little effort, and wishes it were like that for himself. The next day, Wile E. Coyote tries in vain to steal the card from the group.

The group eventually discovers Area 52, run by a woman known as Mother. Mother shows the group a short film about the blue monkey, which can devolve humans into monkeys. Marvin the Martian, imprisoned in the facility, leads a group of aliens to try to steal the card, but DJ's group escapes. Seeing Mona Lisa's face on the card, the group concludes they must view the painting in the Louvre.

At the Louvre, the group discovers that the card contains a viewing window for the Mona Lisa and uses it to discover a hidden map of Africa. Elmer Fudd appears and chases Bugs and Daffy through several paintings to obtain the card. Meanwhile, Kate is kidnapped by Beaky Buzzard and Smith, Mr. Chairman's bodyguard. DJ rescues Kate, while Elmer disintegrates into tiny dots after emerging from a pointillist painting.

The group travels to Africa and meets Granny, Sylvester, and Tweety, who escort them to the ruins of a jungle temple containing the blue monkey. At that point, Granny and company reveal themselves to be Mr. Chairman, Smith, and Taz in disguise. Mr. Chairman teleports everyone to the Acme headquarters and tricks DJ into giving him the diamond in exchange for Damian's release.

Marvin is sent to place the diamond in an Acme satellite's ray gun; with it, Mr. Chairman plans to turn most of the world's population into monkeys to make his products before reverting the population into people who will buy them while everyone will be turning into mindless fruits. DJ and Kate rescue Damian from a death trap, while Bugs and Daffy chase Marvin into space. Marvin defeats Bugs, prompting Daffy to become Duck Dodgers to destroy the diamond. The intervention leads to Mr. Chairman transforming into a monkey, leading to his arrest.

Bugs and Daffy return to Earth, where it is revealed that the preceding events were all staged and part of a movie in production. Bugs promises Daffy that they will be equal partners before the latter is flattened by the Looney Tunes rings. Porky Pig attempts to close the film with his classic catchphrase "That's all, folks!", but the studio closes, much to Porky's indignation.

• Brendan Fraser as Damian "D. J." Drake, Jr. / himself
• Jenna Elfman as Kate Houghton
• Steve Martin as Mr. Chairman
• Heather Locklear as Dusty Tails
• Joan Cusack as Mother
• Timothy Dalton as Damian Drake
• Bill Goldberg as Smith
• Don Stanton as Mr. Warner
• Dan Stanton as Mr. Warner's brother
• Mary Woronov as Acme VP, Bad Ideas
• Marc Lawrence as Acme VP, Stating the Obvious
• Ron Perlman as Acme VP, Never Learning
• Robert Picardo as Acme VP, Rhetorical Questions
• Bill McKinney as Acme VP, Nitpicking
• Vernon Wells as Acme VP, Child Labor
• George Murdock as Acme VP, Unfairly Promoted
• Leo Rossi as Acme VP, Climbing to the Top
• Archie Hahn as Stunt Director
• Dick Miller as Security Guard (cameo)
• Roger Corman as Hollywood Director (cameo)
• Jeff Gordon as himself (cameo)
• Matthew Lillard as himself (cameo)
• Kevin McCarthy as Dr. Miles Bennell (cameo)
• Peter Graves as Civil Defense Film Host (cameo, uncredited)
• Michael Jordan as himself (cameo via archive footage from Space Jam, uncredited)

• Joe Alaskey as Daffy Duck, Bugs Bunny, Sylvester, Beaky Buzzard, and Mama Bear^[2]
• Jeff Bennett as Foghorn Leghorn, Yosemite Sam, and Nasty Canasta^[2]
• Billy West as Elmer Fudd and Peter Lorre^[2]
• Eric Goldberg as Marvin the Martian, Speedy Gonzales, and Tweety^[2]
• Bruce Lanoil as Pepé Le Pew^[2]
• June Foray as Granny^[2]
• Bob Bergen as Porky Pig^[2]
• Casey Kasem as Shaggy Rogers^[2]
• Frank Welker as Scooby-Doo^[2]
• Danny Chambers as Cottontail Smith^[2]
• Stan Freberg as Junior Bear^[2]
• Will Ryan as Papa Bear^[2]
• Danny Mann as Robo Dog and Spy Car^[2]
• Brendan Fraser as Tasmanian Devil and Tasmanian She-Devil^[2]
• Mel Blanc as Gremlin Car (archive recordings)^[2]
• Paul Julian as Road Runner (archive recordings) (uncredited)
• Bill Roberts as Michigan J. Frog (archive recordings) (uncredited)
• Jackie Morrow as Owl Jolson (archive recordings) (uncredited)

 

Looney Tunes: Back in Action was initially developed as a sequel to Space Jam (1996). As development began, the film's plot was going to involve a new basketball competition with Michael Jordan and the Looney Tunes against a new alien villain named Berserk-O!. Artist Bob Camp was tasked with designing Berserk-O! and his henchmen. Joe Pytka would have returned to direct and Spike Brandt and Tony Cervone signed on as the animation supervisors. However, Jordan did not agree to star in a sequel. According to Camp, a producer lied to the studio, claiming that Jordan had signed on in order to keep development going. Without Jordan involved with the project, Warner Bros. was uninterested, and cancelled plans for Space Jam 2.^[3]

The film then re-entered development as Spy Jam and was to star Jackie Chan. Warner Bros. was also planning a film titled Race Jam, which would have starred racing driver Jeff Gordon. Both projects were ultimately cancelled. Warner Bros. eventually asked Joe Dante to direct Back in Action. In the early 1990s, Dante wanted to produce a biographical comedy with HBO, called Termite Terrace. It centered around director filmmaker and cartoonist Chuck Jones' early years at Warner Bros. in the 1930s. On the project, Dante recalled, "It was a hilarious story and it was very good except that Warner Bros. said, 'Look, it's an old story. It's got period stuff in it. We don't want that. We want to rebrand our characters and we want to do Space Jam.'"^[4]

Dante agreed to direct Back in Action as a tribute to Jones. He and screenwriter Larry Doyle reportedly wanted the film to be the "anti-Space Jam" as Dante disliked how that film represented the Looney Tunes brand and personalities.^[5] Dante said, "I was making a movie for them with those characters [Looney Tunes: Back in Action] and they did not want to know about those characters. They didn't want to know why Bugs Bunny shouldn't do hip-hop. It was a pretty grim experience all around."^[6] Warner Bros. hired Walt Disney Feature Animation's Eric Goldberg, most known for his fast-paced, Warner Bros.-inspired animation of the Genie in Aladdin (1992), to direct the animation.

On the film, Dante stated, "It's a gagfest. Not having a particularly strong story, it just goes from gag to gag and location to location. It's not a particularly compelling narrative, but, of course, that's not where the charm of the movie is supposed to lie." On the subject of filming, Dante stated that each scene with animated characters would be shot three times; first a rehearsal with a fake stuffed stand-in, then with nothing in the frame, and lastly, with a "mirror ball" in the shot to indicate to the computers where the light sources were. Afterwards, the animators would start their work and put the characters in the frame. According to Dante, a "problem" occurred when the studio executives grew tired of the film's jokes and wanted them to be changed. As a result, the studio brought in twenty-five gag writers to try to write jokes that were short enough for the voice actors to dub into an animated character's mouth. Despite this, the film has one credited writer.^[7]

Dante stated that he had no creative freedom on the project, and called it "the longest year and a half of my life". Dante felt that while he and Goldberg managed to preserve the original personalities of the characters, the opening, middle, and end of the film are different from what Dante had envisioned.^[8] John Requa and Glenn Ficarra initially wrote the story along with Doyle. But it was removed later.

Looney Tunes: Back in Action was released on November 14, 2003, originally planned to open earlier that summer. The film grossed $68.5 million worldwide against a budget of $80 million.^[9][10]

Warner Bros. was hoping to start a revitalized franchise of Looney Tunes media and products with the success of Back in Action. New animated shorts and a Duck Dodgers TV series were commissioned to tie-in with Back in Action. However, due to the film's financial failure, the Looney Tunes franchise remained primarily on television for nearly two decades. Warner Bros. would not produce another theatrical Looney Tunes film until Space Jam: A New Legacy, which was released in 2021.

Warner Home Video released Looney Tunes: Back in Action on VHS and DVD on March 2, 2004. The film was re-released on DVD in separate widescreen (2.35:1) and full screen (1.33:1) editions on September 7, 2010. It was also released on Blu-ray with bonus features on December 2, 2014. A double DVD and Blu-ray release, paired with Space Jam, was released on June 7, 2016.^[11]

On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes the film holds an approval rating of 57% based on 138 reviews, with an average rating of 6/10. The website's critics consensus reads: "The plot is a nonsensical, hyperactive jumble and the gags are relatively uninspired compared to the classic Looney Tunes cartoons."^[12] At Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score a 64 out of 100, based on 32 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews"^[13] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale.^[14]

Chicago Sun-Times critics Roger Ebert and Richard Roeper gave the film "Two Thumbs Up"; Roeper called it a "cheerful and self-referential romp blending animation with live action in a non-stop quest for silly laughs", while Ebert called it "goofy fun".^[15]

The film was nominated for a Saturn Award for Best Animated Film, a Annie Award for Best Animated Feature and a Satellite Award for Best Animated or Mixed Media Feature.

This was the final film scored by composer Jerry Goldsmith. Due to Goldsmith's failing health, the last reel of the film was actually scored by John Debney, though Goldsmith was the only credited composer in marketing materials and the Varèse Sarabande soundtrack album only contains Goldsmith's music (although the first and last cues are adaptations of compositions heard in Warner Bros. cartoons). Debney receives an "Additional Music by" credit in the closing titles of the film and "Special Thanks" in the soundtrack album credits.^[16] Goldsmith died in July 2004, eight months after the film's release.

Looney Tunes: Back in Action has a tie-in platform video game of the same name which was developed by Warthog Games and published by Electronic Arts for PlayStation 2, GameCube and Game Boy Advance. Some Xbox and Microsoft Windows versions of the video game were planned, but were cancelled because of the financial failure of the film.

• Official website
• Looney Tunes: Back in Action at IMDb
• Looney Tunes: Back in Action at Box Office Mojo
• Looney Tunes: Back in Action at Rotten Tomatoes