"Did you know that's Roger Corman playing the film director?" asked Mr. B, as we sat watching Looney Tunes: Back in Action, and that was how my world fell apart just a tiny bit. Don't get me wrong, I did know at one point that Joe Dante was behind this pile of unmitigated crap, but some small, helpful part of me had managed to repress the fact for years. I like Dante - like him a lot, in fact - for the joy he takes in anarchy; his nastiness scares me a little, but in the most delicious way. He's a Roger Corman alumnus, so Corman's presence in the film was all the reminder I needed to bring me down to earth with a bump. To make it absolutely clear: while I'm frequently guilty of describing films as headache-inducing, in almost a year of blogging, this is the first to make me physically reach for the packet of painkillers, an overlong, overloud mess that makes a mockery of the wit and grace of its source material.
I'm prepared to concede that on paper, Dante would be a fantastic candidate to bring the old Looney Tunes cartoons to life. He's used to mixing live action with animation, after all, in the likes of Gremlins and Small Soldiers, and he's always been good at nastiness without actual cruelty - his protagonists are generally pretty sympathetic, and he treats them accordingly. To be honest, he'd be exactly the sort of person I'd have thought of myself for a project like this.
So, what went wrong? Unfortunately, it's more a question of what didn't. We'll start with the plot, which is overly complex and muddled. Its sole purpose seems to be to provide a framework for the gags - no bad thing, particularly given the source - but with this being the case, there's no good reason to introduce such a confusing number of narrative elements. Then we have the performances, which range from the adequate (Timothy Dalton, Jenna Elfman) to the bad (Brendan Fraser) to the wince-inducingly awful - Steve Martin, I'm looking at you here.
The script, meanwhile, relies too heavily on dismemberment jokes, whilst blending casual sexism with a worrying dedication to the dark art of product placement. There's a whole bunch of digs at political correctness, too, which is really rather sad. True, the original cartoon shorts existed in another, darker time, but their joyous lunacy was never reliant on awkward sexual or racial stereotyping - it simply occurred alongside them because of the different social climate.
In the interests of full disclosure, I'll admit there were a couple of high spots, because Joan Cusack is always a high spot no matter what sort of a trainwreck she signs up for. There's one single, inspired segment, too, that takes place at the Louvre, with our animated heroes jumping from painting to painting and taking on the trademark traits of the styles involved. This particular sequence offers a single glimpse at what the movie could have been - a springboard to introduce these beloved characters to a whole new audience. Instead, however, it serves as a reminder that nothing is ever truly timeless.
No comments:
Post a Comment