Bugs and Brendan: just 'Looney' enough

Friday, November 14, 2003

By Ron Weiskind, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

The Looney Tunes animated shorts have been enjoyed by children for 60 years but were written with adults in mind. That explains why Bugs Bunny often showed up in drag, why many of the cartoons were movie parodies, why Wile E. Coyote fit philosopher George Santayana's definition of a fanatic (one who redoubles his efforts having forgotten his aim).

	'LOONEY TUNES: BACK IN ACTION' RATING: PG for some mild language and innuendo. STARRING: Brendan Fraser, Jenna Elfman, Steve Martin. DIRECTOR: Joe Dante.

In the past decade or so, the custodians of the franchise at Warner Bros. have been trying too hard to reenergize the characters for kids. Who thought it was a good idea to let them play second fiddle to Michael Jordan in "Space Jam"? Why water down Bugs and the gang by creating juvenile versions of them in TV's "Tiny Toon Adventures"?

In "Looney Tunes: Back in Action," every major Looney Tunes character and several of the minor ones show up in another conglomeration of live action and animation. But their human counterpart is Brendan Fraser, who has become virtually a cartoon character himself, thanks to his roles in "George of the Jungle," "Dudley Do-Right," "Monkeybone" and (shudder) three Pauly Shore movies.

Add an almost unrecognizable Steve Martin as the evil head of the Acme Co. -- a character who qualifies as a walking sight gag -- and you may stop looking for where the live action stops and the animation begins.

This is a good thing. "Looney Tunes: Back in Action" creates a universe of Hollywood in-jokes, pop-culture parody and gentle mockery that is smart enough to be silly, a world just like ours in which it seems perfectly natural for Daffy Duck to go woo-hooing all over the place.

The plot is silly, too, and best ignored. Fraser plays DJ Drake, a studio security guard who wants to be a stuntman but has enough pride not to ask for help from his father, Damien, a movie star who specializes in playing debonair spies. Damien is portrayed by Timothy Dalton, a former James Bond. Similar references abound throughout the movie.

At any rate, it seems Damien really is a spy, and he's been captured by Acme because he may know the whereabouts of the Blue Monkey diamond, which has mystical powers that Acme plans to use in a plot that -- well, screenwriter Larry Doyle couldn't figure out a good reason, either.

The Looney Tuners get involved because studio executive Kate Houghton has canceled Daffy's contract for reasons having to do with demographics and corporate synergy (OK, "Space Jam" was her idea). She's played by Jenna Elfman, typecast as the ditz who thinks she's smart. Daffy takes off with DJ while Bugs tries to tell Kate why the duck is vital to the success of his cartoons.

Yeah, I know, silly. But director Joe Dante, the pop-culture maven behind such films as "Gremlins" and "Explorers," keeps the pace moving fast enough that you don't mind -- it's not quite "Airplane!" speed, but it's in the same spirit.

Besides, many of the jokes are clever -- from DJ saying he had more screen time in "The Mummy" than Brendan Fraser to an oasis in the desert turning out to be a Wal-Mart (complete with a reference to product placement).

The film's most inspired sequence takes the characters to the Louvre, where Bugs and Daffy (with Yosemite Sam in pursuit) jump into the frames of several famous paintings and interact with the surroundings -- from Dali's soft watches to Munch's "The Scream" to the Seurat painting popularly known as "Sunday in the Park."

But it's also fun to see how the movie works the other Looney Tunes characters into the mix, along with such recognizable humans as Heather Locklear and Joan Cusack as well as Dante's trademark Roger Corman cameo -- the king of low-budget independent movies is cast as the director of a new "Batman" movie.

Now that's silly. And funny.

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