Looney Tunes: Back in Action Is Better Than Space Jam

For whatever reason, 1996's Space Jam is on that list of millennials' childhood favorites, alongside Hocus Pocus and We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story. While Space Jam was a massive box-office success, its critical reception was rather muted, with Looney Tunes giant Chuck Jones, in particular, expressing his displeasure. And there's a reason for that: It's a terrible movie.

Sorry, but while Lola Bunny was, for better or worse, a character for the ages, a lot of the gags hold up, and the voice cast is remarkable (with Billy West's Bugs and Dee Bradley Baker's Daffy among the best parts), Space Jam is an unstoppable force meeting the immovable object that is Michael Jordan's utter lack of screen presence. While His Airness had, and still has, charisma to spare, that doesn't translate into the heightened reality required to appear alongside cartoon characters. To put it simply, he's no Bob Hoskins.

However, there's a superior Looney Tunes film, and, luckily, it's available on Netflix, in time for its 15th anniversary: 2003's Looney Tunes: Back in Action.

Back in Action Has Actual Actors

No disrespect to the great Wayne Knight and Bill Murray, but they're the only professional actors in Space Jam, saddled with a cast of either newbies or non-actors. Back in Action, by contrast, builds its plot around experienced actors who can, y'know, act.

The plot of Back in Action goes as follows: Tired after decades of playing second fiddle to Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck (both voiced by the late Joe Alaskey) demands his own cartoon from Warner Bros. Instead, he's fired, and security guard/aspiring stuntman DJ Drake (Brendan Fraser) asked to escort him off the lot. Daffy escapes and winds up crashing the Batmobile into the iconic Warner Bros. Water Tower, which results in Drake's firing. Daffy follows him home, where DJ discovers via a videotaped message that his father Damian (Timothy Dalton), an action film star, is actually a secret agent and has been kidnapped by the Acme Corporation. He tells DJ to find the Blue Monkey Diamond before the video cuts off. DJ and Daffy leave, just missing Bugs and Warner Bros. executive Kate Houghton (Jenna Elfman), who have been sent to rehire Daffy (even though Kate's been fired herself), as Bug's routines fall flat without him. The two duos eventually meet up and set off on a madcap chase for the diamond against all the "bad guy" Looney Tunes characters -- Yosemite Sam, Elmer Fudd, etc. -- and the Acme Corporation's evil head, Mr. Chairman (Steve Martin).

That's a stacked cast of characters, and it all works due to the performers. Elfman is a better-than-expected straight man, Martin is just astonishingly weird, and Fraser leans all the way in to his wacky. Alaskey is phenomenal in his dual roles.

Its Director Is A Legend

Joe Dante on the set of Looney Tunes; Back in Action

The other point in Back in Action's favor? It's directed by Joe Dante, known for Gremlins, Innerspace and Small Soldiers. And with committed performances from his actors, stylish animation directed by Eric Goldberg (the Disney veteran behind Aladdin's Genie), great gags, and a worthy screenplay by The Simpsons writer and New Yorker contributor Larry Doyle to back up his signature 10-stories-up heightened sense of reality, Dante is brilliant throughout.

While he, by all accounts, had a miserable time making the film -- Dante described the experience as "the longest year-and-a-half of my life" due to studio executives who didn't understand the characters or the comedy -- that's no reflected onscreen. Instead, it plays like it should: a loving tribute to the Golden Age of animation, Looney Tunes, and the life given to them by Chuck Jones, Friz Freleng, Robert McKimson, Tex Avery, Bob Clampett and others from kids who grew up watching them endlessly on television. It's the purest kind of fan film: a tribute to the things you love, told with enough originality and wit that you make it your own.

It Gave Us the Duck Dodgers TV Series

It's unfairly forgotten today, but the promotional push for Looney Tunes: Back in Action also gave us Cartoon Network's Duck Dodgers series. And Duck Dodgers, in case you don't remember, is awesome. It parodies a certain Halo alien race as "The Fudd." That's amazing.

A box-office bomb, Looney Tunes: Back in Action deserves to be rediscovered and remembered, way more than its flashier basketball-playing sibling.