Looney Tunes: Back in Action
There's a slight typo in the title of the new Warner Bros. kiddie comedy opening today. It should be called ''Joe Dante: Back in Action.'' The cross-referencing mad genius who directed ''Gremlins'' and ''Innerspace'' back in the 1980s has been AWOL for a long time, but he comes rocketing back with powers set on stun in ''Looney Tunes: Back in Action.'' The movie revives the studio's languishing animated franchise with far more fizz and finesse than the dire 1996 ''Space Jam,'' but as nice as it is to see Bugs and company, the real energizer bunny here is behind the camera.
As evidenced by the splendid DVD collection released recently, the original Warner Bros. cartoons were among the first to pitch their jokes to grown-ups as well as children -- ironic and sardonic, they blew a raspberry at the more genteel offerings from Disney. They were also well ahead of their time, with Daffy Duck stepping outside of the frame of the cel in the 1953 classic ''Duck Amuck.''
In ''Back in Action,'' Dante takes that legacy and super-sizes it. Merging the Looney Tunes universe with the rapid-fire, gag-a-second style of ''Airplane!,'' the film posits that Bugs has become a star of such magnitude that the studio has no further need for the services of Daffy. Out the duck goes on his feathered behind, tak-
ing with him a security guard and aspiring stuntman named DJ Drake (Brendan Fraser) and, ultimately, the VP in charge of comedy, Kate Houghton (Jenna Elfman). DJ's father happens to be a famous star of spy movies, Damien Drake, played by onetime Bond Timothy Dalton -- already the movie is a furious barrage of pop-culture winks. Dad has been kidnapped by the power-mad CEO of the Acme Corporation, Mr. Chairman (Steve Martin, working several steps beneath his talents in a dippy wig and too-tight pants), who wants to locate a diamond called the Blue Monkey that will turn all humanity into docile worker-apes.
That's the setup, but the joy is in the details, and they are unrelentingly comic. A scene in the studio commissary is typical: Bugs and Kate converse in the foreground while, behind them, Porky Pig and Speedy Gonzalez gripe about political correctness and Shaggy berates actor Matthew Lillard for his portrayal in last year's big-screen ''Scooby Doo'' flop. When Daffy, Bugs, DJ, and Kate are lost in the desert outside Las Vegas (don't ask), Acme operative Wile E. Coyote goes online to buy a rocket launcher (''Gift wrap? It's free!''); one scene later, there's perhaps the best product placement joke in the history of cinema. Chased by Elmer Fudd through the Louvre, Bugs and Daffy jump into Dali's ''The Persistence of Memory'' and cue a floppy Freudian nightmare.
Dante has cast the smaller roles with devilish movie-geek wit: Director Roger Corman, B-movie vet Dick Miller, Hollywood blacklist survivor Marc Lawrence, and Warhol-star-turned-drive-in-queen Mary Woronov all show up, the last unfortunately wasted in a sub-Frau Farbissina role. When the leads stumble into the top-secret Area 52 alien containment facility (Area 51, see, was a hoax), ''Back in Action'' really goes gaga, bringing on Joan Cusack, Peter Graves, Kevin McCarthy reprising his ''Invasion of the Body Snatchers'' role, and various aliens from Robby the Robot to Robot Monster to E. T. himself.
How much of this are kids going to get? How many parents will even get the Hershey's chocolate syrup reference in the shot-by-shot ''Psycho'' shower-scene parody? Dante has never been much for self-control -- that's what's good about him -- but by the end of ''Back in Action,'' your brain may have gone numb from the encyclopedic hammering he doles out here. Eventually the film exhausts even itself, wrapping up with a fairly ordinary action-movie climax and trotting out the Tasmanian Devil, who has never been and never will be funny.
Still, how can you hate a movie that puts Bugs Bunny in a flooded convertible and lets him say ''Hey, whaddya know -- I found Nemo!''
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