RETRO REVIEW
It is no secret that I am a huge fan of "Looney Tunes": they are hilarious, fun, and altogether wonderful. I am also a fan of the classic 1984 film, Ghostbusters: again, they are also hilarious, fun and altogether wonderful. Putting these two things together should be a slam dunk (and God knows it was not). However, a few years earlier, a cartoon anthology film teased us with such a concept. And wasted it completely. Well, sort of.
Before I detail the plot, I should quickly explain what this sort of anthology film is. In the late '70s to early '80s, the "Looney Tunes" were getting overshadowed by the likes of "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" and "He-Man". Still, the Warner Bros. bosses were trying to find some way of bringing these characters back to life. Starting with The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Movie, WB hired a lower-class animation team to create newly animated sequences to tie in to the already classic cartoons of the past. It was a way of getting these shorts back into the public eye at a cheap budget. It came to an end with Daffy Duck's Quackbusters.
Daffy Duck (the first of all characters voiced by the eternally legendary Mel Blanc) is a streetwise prank salesman who learns on TV that a dying billionaire J.P. Cubish would give a cool million to anyone who can make him laugh before he dies. After hilariously dispensing with the shifty butler, Daffy accidentally accomplishes his task and Cubish begins hysterically laughing night and day. That is, of course, until he actually does die. As promised, Cubish's will provides Daffy with the wealth he has only dreamed of. Daffy, naturally, plans to be a miser about it until he is visited by the ghost of Cubish who demands that Daffy use his money to providing a public service. Daffy reluctantly agrees but to spite Cubish, he plans to open a supernatural elimination agency. He quickly recruits Porky Pig and Bugs Bunny as his employees and sets out to take on every monster the world can throw at them. However, Daffy must learn to keep his cool or Cubish will start taking his money with him.
I do not want to be too hard on this movie, because it does feature a lot of great classic cartoons. Most notably "Daffy Dilly", which is fantastic from start to finish. The bigger plot that is tying these cartoons together is okay, but not the movie one being suggested by the title. Obviously Ghostbusters is a huge pop culture icon and the "Looney Tunes" are naturally bigger than that, but if one is going to try and tie them together, it should look like it. They are fighting more monsters than ghosts (though one of the newly animated shorts "The Duxorcist" is a light-hearted parody of The Exorcist). Despite the clear audio difference between the '40s and the '80s, it is good to hear Mel Blanc; I truly smile every time I hear a great Daffy line or a funny Bugs quip.
You might be wondering what Bugs and Porky are doing in this movie if they are not the title characters? Well, you need Bugs. You cannot have a Looney Tunes movie without Bugs. Bugs has a run-in with Count Blood Count, a vampire whom he manages to outsmart. It is all pulled from "Transylvania 6-5000", with little to no changes. Porky's segment takes him to Dry Gulch, New Mexico where he spends the night with Sylvester the Cat in a haunted hotel - all from "Claws for Alarm". I get that the point of this movie is to reintroduce these characters to the next generation, but why not try and do something bigger? A wholly new animated film? Maybe try a deal with Disney to get everybody toget-- Oh wait. That was a year away.
So once you get past the title, Quackbusters is a fun way to spend time with these classic characters and see some great cartoons. The new content is hit-or-miss, but one can tell there was at least the minimum effort put forth. 2D animation is an extinct artform but it will never be forgotten. If it took Quackbusters to get to Who Framed Roger Rabbit, it was all worth it.
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