Looney Tunes: Back in Action
All team (76)
Short description
Daffy Duck grows tired of playing second fiddle to Bugs Bunny at Warner Bros. and walks out on the studio, landing in the company of DJ Drake, a security guard and would-be stuntman who has just been fired. DJ learns that his father, a former screen star, has vanished while hunting a legendary blue diamond, and sets out to find him, with Daffy in tow. The studio's executives decide that Bugs is worth little without his duck, so they send Bugs and a young producer after the pair. The chase crosses several continents, pitting the group against the Acme corporation, which wants the diamond for itself.
Joe Dante directed this blend of hand-drawn animation and live action, the thirteenth of the sixteen features he has made and his first since Small Soldiers. Larry Doyle, Roger S.H. Schulman and Jon Vitti wrote the screenplay. Brendan Fraser plays DJ and voices two characters from the Tunes' gallery, Jenna Elfman plays the producer, Steve Martin plays the villainous Mr. Chairman and Timothy Dalton appears as DJ's father, while Joe Alaskey and Jeff Bennett share a large roster of voices. Some 74 performers are credited and 76 crew members.
Made for about 80 million dollars, the film took roughly 69 million worldwide, a return below its cost. On IMDb it holds 5.8 out of 10 from around 43,000 votes, and on TMDB 6.4 out of 10 from about 1,700 votes. A critics' rating of 6.1 out of 10 from 134 reviews places professional assessments close to the audience scores.
What's left behind the scenes
- Brendan Fraser voiced Taz so well that he replaced the regular voice actor, Jim Cummings.
- When Daffy picks up his belongings, a photograph of the real Warner brothers – Jack Leonard (1892-1978) and Harry Morris (1881-1958), the founders of Warner Bros. studio – is visible in the box.
- As tradition dictates, all animated characters in the film were drawn by hand. Three-dimensional computer animation was only used to create objects such as spaceships, Wile E. Coyote's rocket, a robot dog, and Bugs Bunny's carrots.
- The car in the film is a Tuscan from the independent British company TVR. Approximately 1,000 such cars are assembled in the UK each year. At the time of the film's release, there was no talk of assembly in the United States.
- During the fight in the casino, Daffy advises DJ to bite someone's ear. This is a reference to the incident with Evander Holyfield's ear, which was bitten off by boxer Mike Tyson in 1997.
- The release date was extremely poorly chosen. Initially, the premiere was planned for July, but this decision had to be changed because the animated film "Finding Nemo" (2003) was released and became an instant box office success. The film was released in November, but that was immediately after the releases of "Brother Bear" and "Elf," and shortly before the premieres of "The Cat" and "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King." On top of everything, Warner Bros. had not yet recovered from the production problems and budget overruns, so they decided not to launch a major advertising campaign for "Looney Tunes: Back in Action."
- The film was planned as a sequel to "Space Jam" (Joe Pytka, 1996). Jackie Chan was considered for the lead role, but the idea never went beyond the initial concept.
- Elmer Fudd chases Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck through three world-famous paintings. These are Georges Seurat's (1859-1891) "A Sunday on La Grande Jatte" from the Art Institute of Chicago, Salvador Dalí's (1904-1989) "The Persistence of Memory" from the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and Edvard Munch's (1863-1944) "The Scream" from the Munch Museum collection in Oslo.
- When Elmer Fudd chases Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck through the museum, a suite from Modest Mussorgsky's (1839-1881) "Pictures at an Exhibition" cycle plays in the background – a kind of musical walk through an imaginary art gallery.
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